West In­dies bat­ting icon Bri­an Lara and his part­ner­ship with the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) were the cen­tre of a so­cial me­dia row be­tween for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath yes­ter­day.

The sit­u­a­tion de­vel­oped af­ter Row­ley took to Face­book with the fol­low­ing post: “Bri­an Lara is an icon of in­ter­na­tion­al and in­ter-gen­er­a­tional pro­por­tions.

Bri­an Lara is among the best our na­tion has ever pro­duced!

“Bri­an Lara is an ex­em­plary cit­i­zen and a bea­con of hope to gen­er­a­tions to come. The sport­ing world reveres him.

His records stand like a colos­sus above all else!

His na­tion ac­knowl­edges him and our youth re­spect him.

The UNC ca­bal and their sundry Ali Babas MUST NOT DIS­RE­SPECT HIM.

“You can can­cel as many in­de­pen­dent pa­rades as your agen­da re­quires but Bri­an Lara must be re­spect­ed and con­tin­ue to rep­re­sent the best that this na­tion prays for every day and has re­ceived as a bless­ing to all its peo­ple. Hands off, you Philistines!!!!

‘The Great IVA Richards speaks with rev­er­ence about Bri­an Lara but in Trinidad and To­ba­go, some twit thinks that Lara is to be “col­lat­er­al dam­age” in the cur­rent “scorched earth” pol­i­cy of on­go­ing ret­ri­bu­tion at TSTT.

We will have none of it.

“The Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um has been built as a lega­cy to his Her­culean con­tri­bu­tion. It is now a pre­mier crick­et venue in the world. The man him­self must be equal­ly re­spect­ed. He must re­main above the de­struc­tive pet­ty pol­i­tics that is now con­sum­ing this na­tion.”

Row­ley gave no con­text to his post. How­ev­er, many fans took this to mean that TSTT has ter­mi­nat­ed his brand am­bas­sador­ship with the com­pa­ny.

Short­ly af­ter Row­ley’s post, Padarath shared a What­sApp mes­sage which stat­ed, “A few min­utes ago, I re­ceived a phone call from our na­tion­al hero and world-renowned Bri­an Charles Lara, who con­firmed that his con­tract with TSTT end­ed in 2022 un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion and it was not re­newed by them. Fur­ther, he ex­pressed his sur­prise and con­cern, dis­tanc­ing him­self from any­one say­ing oth­er­wise. That is PURE CLASS!”

When con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia about Row­ley’s post last night, Padarath said: “It’s a bla­tant lie. I wouldn’t say it’s an in­cor­rect ac­cu­sa­tion. He (Row­ley) has a his­to­ry of this.”

He con­firmed Lara had con­tact­ed him on the is­sue.

“He (Lara) ex­pressed deep con­cern and he al­so in­di­cat­ed to me that the con­tract ex­pired dur­ing the last ad­min­is­tra­tion and it was not re­newed. He did in­di­cate to me at some point that he will make a state­ment in the pub­lic as it re­gards the post that was made ear­li­er this evening. But it is al­so deeply trou­bling, wor­ry­ing and not sur­pris­ing all at the same time that the for­mer prime min­is­ter will put out some­thing in the pub­lic do­main like this with­out know­ing the facts.”

Padarath added, “This is a man that head­ed the cab­i­net for nine and a half years of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s post-in­de­pen­dence his­to­ry and most re­cent­ly, this is not like about 10 years or five years ago, this was just a cou­ple months ago and there­fore, ob­vi­ous­ly the for­mer prime min­is­ter was asleep at the wheel be­cause to make a state­ment in the pub­lic like that and not recog­nis­ing that it was un­der his ad­min­is­tra­tion that the con­tract ex­pired, it was not re­newed and did not even seek to clar­i­fy or ask a ques­tion but rather made some most out­landish and ridicu­lous state­ments on so­cial me­dia, you know, to me it’s com­plete­ly mind-bog­gling in this en­tire sce­nario. But as I said, Mr Lara was very gra­cious by reach­ing out to me this evening to ex­press his deep con­cern at some­thing that is to­tal­ly er­ro­neous.”

TSTT al­so clar­i­fied its po­si­tion in a brief re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia last night.

“TSTT’s con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments with Bri­an Lara came to an end in 2022. How­ev­er, our re­la­tion­ship with him re­mains strong and we have proud­ly sup­port­ed him and his ini­tia­tives over the years. He con­tin­ues to be a cher­ished mem­ber of the ex­tend­ed TSTT fam­i­ly.”

In Oc­to­ber 2003, Sam Mar­tin, then TSTT CEO, an­nounced a two-year con­tract with Lara, who was cap­tain of the West In­dies team at the time. Mar­tin re­vealed that TSTT would pay Lara for his as­so­ci­a­tion and cov­er his telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices up to the max­i­mum of $55,000 per year.

Lara re­tired from Test crick­et in April 2007 but his re­la­tion­ship with TSTT con­tin­ued.