New­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent of the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB), Az­im Bas­sarath in his vic­to­ry speech af­ter for a fourth suc­ces­sive term said he will look at con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form and al­so will open his hands to those op­pose to him, in the in­ter­est of de­vel­op­ing the sport which has tak­en a lash over the last cou­ple of years.

Bas­sarath de­feat­ed for­mer West In­dies leg-spin­ner Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine 31-13 at the board's elec­tion on Tues­day night in Cou­va.

Bas­sarath said: "Dur­ing my play­ing days a leg-spin­ner nev­er got me out and it didn't hap­pen even to­day." In an ob­vi­ous ref­er­ence to Ram­nar­ine, Bas­sarath pro­voked laugh­ter when he added: "By the time to leg-spin­ners came on the fast bowlers would have al­ready cleaned me up."

On a se­ri­ous note though he said that dur­ing the next pe­ri­od (three-years) he will have a look at the con­sti­tu­tion: "We will con­tin­ue to look at the board's con­sti­tu­tion as we move for­ward be­cause we want to have a struc­ture in place that leads to greater sta­bil­i­ty and de­vel­op­ment."

In mid-De­cem­ber, the High Court ruled in favour of Bas­sarath and the TTCB, af­ter the Na­tion­al League com­mit­tee led by Ram­nar­ine chal­lenged the 12 'out­go­ing votes' held by the ap­point­ed ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers.

Bas­sarath said, "The courts have ruled in our favour and this speaks a lot. We want to now re­pair the dam­age that was done to the im­age of the board so that cor­po­rate T&T can part­ner with us mov­ing for­ward. This is so im­por­tant in get­ting all our de­vel­op­ment plans rolled out. We will con­tin­ue to play close at­ten­tion to our na­tion­al teams, as we want to see bet­ter and more con­sis­tent­ly pos­i­tive re­sults. We have our work cut out for us and we in­tend to con­tin­ue push­ing for­ward as we take crick­et un­to bet­ter days in T&T."

And, on­ly on Mon­day, Bas­sarath was the sub­ject of an au­dit for 2014-2016 con­duct­ed by the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) which made na­tion­al news head­lines af­ter the TTCB was ac­cused of mis­al­lo­ca­tion of $3 mil­lion dol­lars of spon­sor­ship from the state-owned com­pa­ny and which it was asked to re­pay forth­with.

Even with this mat­ter un­re­solved, Bas­sarath still man­aged to win a con­fi­dence vote from the gen­er­al mem­ber­ship in con­vinc­ing fash­ion to the dis­ap­point­ment of his op­po­nent.

The elec­tion of a new ex­ec­u­tive was the on­ly item on the meet­ing agen­da which had 44 per­sons present to vote. On­ly one mem­ber from pri­ma­ry schools showed up and due to the pass­ing of ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber Patrick Ram­per­sad and na­tion­al league rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ca­mal Bas­deo, the vot­ing was down to 45 and not the usu­al 47.

Ram­nar­ine, a res­i­dent of Cas­cade, said he al­so got a vic­to­ry de­spite los­ing the pres­i­den­cy: "I thought it was a vic­to­ry for us be­cause los­ing the pres­i­den­cy bat­tle is just one small thing. That is just one part of the big pic­ture. Dur­ing this process, we were able to bring to the fore the poor gov­er­nance struc­ture of the TTCB and we are able to bring to the pub­lic do­main, the is­sues that have re­al­ly been hurt­ing the de­vel­op­ment of crick­et in this coun­try."

Asked if he was pleased with the elec­tion process, Ram­nar­ine said: "I was not be­cause there are many is­sues that we ob­ject­ed to. Imag­ine East Zone Coun­cil came here to vote but they have not held an elec­tion in the Zone for two and a half years. When you look at the board's con­sti­tu­tion they were not sup­posed to vote on the night.

"When you have a sit­u­a­tion with all the Af­fil­i­ates, as they have not been meet­ing the re­quire­ments to con­tin­ue as af­fil­i­ates but they were all here to vote."

For­mer West In­dies Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (WIPA) pres­i­dent said he will con­tin­ue the fight for good gov­er­nance. "Peo­ple must un­der­stand that this is not about pow­er but is all about look­ing to put things right. Look, I came from noth­ing and crick­et has giv­en me every­thing. I don't need any­thing from crick­et again but I feel it is my du­ty to pro­tect the sport that has giv­en me so much."