The re­vival of West In­dies crick­et may well de­pend on Trinidad and To­ba­go's abil­i­ty to churn out qual­i­ty play­ers in the Test match are­na much as they have done in the T20 game.

So said sec­ond vice-pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board Lal­man Kow­lessar when the Move­ment for Change cel­e­brat­ed their re­turn to gov­er­nance in re­cent na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions.

Kow­lessar, a re­tired Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, Ch­agua­nas teacher was re-elect­ed un­op­posed and now heads the im­por­tant Na­tion­al Se­lec­tion Com­mit­tee which was rat­i­fied at a T&TCB re­treat two week­end ago.

He was re­fer­ring to the hu­mil­i­at­ing de­feat suf­fered by the West In­dies on Sun­day when they ca­pit­u­lat­ed in three days to In­dia in the Sec­ond Test in Mum­bai. The match com­mem­o­rat­ed Sachin Ten­dulkar's 200th and fi­nal Test.

Kow­lessar said while T&T crick­et has made great strides and has much to be proud of, the re­gion­al out­look is not all that rosy.

"The onus is to res­cue the West In­dies from the morass it has found it­self in,"said Kow­lessar, who is al­so the pres­i­dent of the Um­pires and Scor­ers As­so­ci­a­tion.

Al­so speak­ing to the large turnout of Move­ment for Change guests at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre in Bal­main on Sat­ur­day was Az­im Bas­sarath, pres­i­dent of the T&TCB. He thanked his sup­port­ers for show­ing faith in his lead­er­ship for a third term of of­fice, which has been in­creased from two years to three but sound­ed a cau­tion that much more work needs to be done.

He said lo­cal crick­et is in a bet­ter place than the Move­ment for Change found it four years ago and is poised to progress to a high­er lev­el but he called for all stake­hold­ers to pull to­geth­er.

Bas­sarath said the achieve­ments of the past four years has come about by sound plan­ning and vi­sion which has made the T&T crick­et brand a house­hold name right around the world.

He com­mend­ed mem­bers of his ex­ec­u­tive in­clud­ing Dr Allen Sam­my, Bal­dath Ma­habir, Lal­man Kow­lessar, Ar­joon Ram­lal, Dud­nath Ramkessoon, Patrick Ram­per­sad, Ann Brown-John and Sukesh Ma­ni­am for the qual­i­ty of their con­tri­bu­tion to the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the sport.

He said suc­cess on­ly comes from hard work, build­ing trust and ful­fill­ing promis­es made to the stake­hold­ers which their ri­vals in the re­cent na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions failed to ap­pre­ci­ate.

The Bas­sarath led in­cum­bent slate de­feat­ed a spir­it­ed chal­lenge by for­mer na­tion­al play­ers Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine and Daren Gan­ga in the Oc­to­ber 26 polls.

The T&TCB pres­i­dent said a vic­to­ry of their ri­vals would have placed lo­cal and re­gion­al crick­et in jeop­ardy.

But the cam­paign­ing and elec­tions over, Bas­sarath said the time has come for every­one with the game at heart to re-ded­i­cate them­selves to the task at hand and work in uni­ty to make fur­ther progress.

"We at the crick­et board have made trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty our hall­mark of gov­er­nance and can stand scruti­ny. It is a rich lega­cy which many oth­er sport­ing or­ga­ni­za­tions would do well to em­u­late," said Bas­sarath.

Guests at the func­tion were al­so treat­ed to sev­er­al en­ter­tain­ing per­for­mances from lo­cal In­di­an songstress Ameena Ram­saran, na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber Taran­dath Sam­my and long­stand­ing um­pire and or­a­tor In­skip Wat­son.

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