Sama­ki Fe­li­cian

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

From the crick­et fields of Ch­agua­nas to the class­rooms and coach­ing clin­ics across Trinidad and To­ba­go, Pradeep Vish­nu has spent his life shap­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of ath­letes. The 65-year-old for­mer na­tion­al youth crick­eter, coach, and au­thor has made youth de­vel­op­ment not just his ca­reer but his call­ing.

Vish­nu’s jour­ney in sport took a ma­jor step for­ward in 1986, when he joined the Min­istry of Sport as a games coach, a role he would proud­ly serve in for more than two decades. Dur­ing that time, he worked along­side some of the coun­try’s finest sports­men and ad­min­is­tra­tors, in­clud­ing the late Bernard Julien, Tony Gray, Alec Burns, and Aneil Ra­jah. To­geth­er, they de­vel­oped youth pro­grammes and con­duct­ed sport car­a­vans across the coun­try, bring­ing crick­et and oth­er dis­ci­plines to schools and com­mu­ni­ties na­tion­wide. These ini­tia­tives un­earthed hid­den tal­ent and in­spired count­less young ath­letes.

Ea­ger to fur­ther im­prove his coach­ing skills, Vish­nu made a bold move the fol­low­ing year. In 1987, he used his own sav­ings to trav­el to Eng­land, where he spent five months com­plet­ing ju­nior, se­nior, and sports coach­ing cours­es.

“It was a fan­tas­tic ex­pe­ri­ence. It opened my eyes to new meth­ods and philoso­phies that I want­ed to bring back home,” he ex­plained.

Vish­nu’s love for sport be­gan in his youth. Grow­ing up in a hum­ble home in Ch­agua­nas, he found joy and dis­ci­pline through crick­et. He rep­re­sent­ed Cen­tral Sports and lat­er the Trinidad and To­ba­go Un­der-16 team, where his lead­er­ship and tech­ni­cal un­der­stand­ing of the game be­gan to stand out.

But while many dreamed of star­dom on the pitch, Vish­nu’s true pas­sion was in teach­ing.

“I al­ways loved help­ing oth­ers un­der­stand the game,” he said. “See­ing young play­ers grow, that was my re­al joy.”

Through­out his coach­ing ca­reer, Vish­nu worked with fu­ture West In­dies stars such as Dwayne Bra­vo and Rayad Em­rit at the youth lev­el.

“You could al­ways see the po­ten­tial in them. They had nat­ur­al abil­i­ty and a hunger for the game. You just knew they were meant for great things,” he shared.

As his ca­reer evolved, Vish­nu’s pas­sion for ed­u­ca­tion led him to writ­ing. He is the au­thor of three in­struc­tion­al books, Learn Crick­et the Easy Way (Books 1 & 2) and Learn Soc­cer the Easy Way. Each pub­li­ca­tion was de­signed to make sport ac­ces­si­ble and en­joy­able for young learn­ers.

“My goal is for these books to reach schools across Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he ex­plained. “They can help stu­dents un­der­stand the fun­da­men­tals of crick­et and foot­ball while build­ing dis­ci­pline and team­work.”

His crick­et man­u­als, he said, are “like the Bible of the sport”, cov­er­ing every­thing from rules and ethics to coach­ing phi­los­o­phy and play­er psy­chol­o­gy. The foot­ball edi­tion fo­cus­es on tech­ni­cal skills such as pass­ing, de­fend­ing, at­tack­ing, and un­der­stand­ing for­ma­tions.

Now re­tired since 2020, and liv­ing in Freeport, Vish­nu re­mains deeply com­mit­ted to sport and ed­u­ca­tion. He hopes to con­tin­ue serv­ing as a men­tor and tal­ent scout, guid­ing as­pir­ing ath­letes and en­sur­ing the con­tin­ued growth of youth sport in T&T.

Af­ter a life­time of ded­i­ca­tion, Vish­nu’s mis­sion is clear: to pass on his knowl­edge and cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for the next gen­er­a­tion.

“Sport gave me pur­pose. Now, I want to give that same pur­pose to oth­ers,” he said.