Ever­ard Gor­don

The T&T Crick­et Board has made a change in the for­mat of the Na­tion­al League for 2012, with no con­sul­ta­tion or dis­cus­sion with the clubs that are in­volved in the game. So said rep­re­sen­ta­tives of 16 of the league's 30 clubs dur­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion held at the Queen's Park Oval on Mon­day night. The pan­el re­vealed that with­out any warn­ing a new for­mat sees the Na­tion­al League in­creased from 10 to 12 clubs. The pan­el in­clud­ed Bryan Davis, for­mer na­tion­al and West In­dies bats­man, Claude Phillip and Sukesh Ma­ni­am and Richard Ramkissoon with Ruskin Mark as co-or­di­na­tor, and point­ed out that be­fore the vote was tak­en on Ju­ly 23, 16 clubs head­ed by reign­ing na­tion­al cham­pi­on team Queen's Park and Preysal, sub­mit­ted a signed pe­ti­tion ask­ing for a stay of the de­ci­sion. How­ev­er, their re­quest was de­nied. A live­ly dis­cus­sion and ex­change of views took place in which mem­bers of sev­er­al of the na­tion­al clubs and fol­low­ers of the game were in­formed, for the first time pub­licly, of the man­ner in which this new for­mat was hand­ed down and vot­ed up­on.

The new for­mat re­quires that each club plays two more match­es than last sea­son. The dis­cus­sion not­ed that it will cost each club an ex­tra $125,000 for the two ad­di­tion­al match­es, a cost that the ex­ec­u­tive of Preysal, Ful­ham and Pow­er­Gen said was pro­hib­i­tive. The rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Mer­ry Boys said that the ex­tra ex­pense to clubs can be man­aged by get­ting a spon­sor. It was al­so re­vealed dur­ing the dis­cus­sions that those who vot­ed were not rep­re­sen­ta­tives of any club but the ap­point­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the T&TCB and ide­al­ly, that the club should have the fi­nal say in the mat­ter. Ac­cord­ing to one of the pan­elists, clubs have heavy salary con­straints, as no­body seems to play for plea­sure any more. An­oth­er stat­ed that crick­et was now a busi­ness and heavy costs are in­curred for meals, trans­port, the fees of the lo­cal play­ers as well as the ac­com­mo­da­tion, and fees for the many for­eign play­ers and that clubs must have a di­rect say. It was al­so point­ed out that the ma­jor con­cern is the qual­i­ty of play ex­pect­ed in the new sea­son since it is un­like­ly that there are 180 good first class play­ers in the coun­try which has just over 1.4 mil­lion peo­ple.

Club rep­re­sen­ta­tives are con­cerned that the qual­i­ty of the com­pe­ti­tion would be sub­stan­dard. It was point­ed out that in Eng­land, where there is a pop­u­la­tion of more than 60 mil­lion, the Coun­ty Cham­pi­onship had to be trimmed be­cause the qual­i­ty was less than ex­pect­ed. Bryan Davis was hap­py to see more peo­ple play­ing but quan­ti­ty is not nec­es­sar­i­ly ev­i­dence of qual­i­ty and Claude Phillip thought that while re­struc­tur­ing may be re­quired, the T&TCB should take the con­cerns and af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with the clubs, go back to the draw­ing board.