Nigel Si­mon & Gail Alexan­der

No funds have been ex­pend­ed to date on the Bri­an Lara Crick­et­ing Acad­e­my since the Acad­e­my is still in its plan­ning stage, Sport Min­is­ter Gary Hunt said yes­ter­day. Hunt gave the in­for­ma­tion in re­ply to an Op­po­si­tion ques­tion re­gard­ing the cur­rent sta­tus of the Bri­an Lara Crick­et­ing Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba. He said the terms Bri­an Lara Crick­et Sta­di­um, Bri­an Lara Crick­et­ing Acad­e­my and Bri­an Lara Sport­ing Com­plex have been in the past used in­ter­change­ably in the pub­lic fo­rum.

"They are of­ten mis­un­der­stood to mean the same...They are, in fact, very dif­fer­ent in­fra­struc­tur­al el­e­ments all con­tained on the Tarou­ba Sport­ing Com­plex," Hunt added. He said the Bri­an Lara Crick­et­ing Acad­e­my, cur­rent­ly in plan­ning stage, was be­ing de­vel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Acad­e­my of Sports and Leisure of the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT). Hunt said the 627-acre site at Tarou­ba was now ready for de­vel­op­ment and would ac­com­mo­date the Tarou­ba Sport­ing Com­plex and En­er­gy and Tech­nol­o­gy Park.

Hunt said the pro­posed Tarou­ba Sport­ing Com­plex will in­clude:

�2 The Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my

�2 Bri­an Lara Crick­et Sta­di­um

�2 Elite Cen­tre for Ex­cel­lence for sports sci­ence, sports med­i­cine, bio-me­chan­ic lab and con­di­tion­ing.

�2 An aquat­ic cen­tre

�2 A cy­cling velo­drome

�2 A cen­tre of field house sports– bas­ket­ball, vol­ley­ball, net­ball and bad­minton

�2 A box­ing and mar­tial arts cen­tre

�2 Cen­tre for field sports–foot­ball, rug­by and hock­ey.

�2 A run­ning track and field.

�2 A gym­nas­tic cen­tre and ho­tel ac­com­mo­da­tion.

Hunt said the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Sta­di­um, which rep­re­sents the first phase of de­vel­op­ment of the Tarou­ba Sport­ing Com­plex, in­cludes ca­pac­i­ty seat­ing for 15,000, cov­ered seat­ing and 19,610 square of play­ing field. The sta­di­um al­so in­volves state-of-the-art me­dia broad­cast­ing, elec­tron­ic score­board, lounges, car parks, con­ces­sion stands and a crick­et acad­e­my for elite de­vel­op­ment.