Shal­iza Has­sanali

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Crick­et Board Deryck Mur­ray is hop­ing that Gov­ern­ment re­wards the T&T crick­et team. Mur­ray, re­spond­ing to Min­is­ter of Sport Gary Hunt, who said they had not con­tem­plat­ed any re­ward for the crick­eters, said the same way the T&T So­ca War­riors were fi­nan­cial­ly re­ward­ed af­ter qual­i­fy­ing and play­ing in the 2006 World Cup in Ger­many, the T&T crick­et team should be re­ward­ed too. Six­teen mem­bers of the So­ca War­rior team were each award­ed $250,000. The to­tal pack­age the So­ca War­riors, coach and its tech­ni­cal staff re­ceived was $31 mil­lion.

"It is for the Gov­ern­ment to de­cide," said Mur­ray. "They (So­ca War­riors) were giv­en fi­nan­cial re­wards. Crick­et is an equal­ly ma­jor sport in the world, so you would hope the Gov­ern­ment would recog­nise the play­ers in this one as well." Mur­ray said if the play­ers were not re­ward­ed life will go on. "They have so much to look for­ward to in the fu­ture. These are young men and there will be many more op­por­tu­ni­ties. Yes, we would wel­come any such re­ward giv­en to them. How­ev­er, the more im­por­tant thing is for these play­ers to con­cen­trate on their fu­tures."

Bright fu­tures ahead

Stat­ing that T&T was proud of the team's achieve­ments, Mur­ray said every­thing now rest in the hands of the Gov­ern­ment. Speak­ing about the play­ers, Mur­ray said each of them had a bright fu­ture ahead in crick­et, not on­ly for the T&T, but the West In­dies team. "Things will open up for the them." Mur­ray al­so heaped prais­es on cap­tain Daren Gan­ga for his lead­er­ship role, for help­ing to reignite the pas­sion for crick­et lo­cal­ly and for bring­ing a ray of hope to the coun­try.

"Hope­ful­ly this will work as a cat­a­lyst to bring about change in West In­dies crick­et. We know that T&T, in­di­vid­ual play­ers, in­di­vid­ual board mem­bers and the board as a whole has a lead­er­ship role to play in Trinidad and To­ba­go and West In­dies Crick­et." Mur­ray be­lieves Gan­ga has enough po­ten­tial and skill to cap­tain the West In­dies team. "Of course he does, he had done the job be­fore for a very short pe­ri­od. And I have no doubt that if he is en­trust­ed with that job again he would do well."