Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board (TTCB) pres­i­dent Az­im Bas­sarath has called for the Red Force team to be be­stowed with a na­tion­al award.

Bas­sarath’s ad­vo­ca­cy comes on the heels of the team win­ning the West In­dies Pro­fes­sion­al Cham­pi­onship for the first time since 2006, break­ing a 20-year drought. T&T de­feat­ed the Guyana Harpy Ea­gles by 141 runs on the fourth day of the fi­nal at the Sir Vi­vian Richards Sta­di­um in An­tigua on Wednes­day.

In win­ning the ti­tle - T&T’s sixth - the Red Force team al­so de­throned the Guyana who were win­ners in each of the last three years.

Dur­ing a wel­come re­cep­tion for the in the VIP Lounge of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Thurs­day af­ter­noon, Bas­sarath said, “I be­lieve this is al­so an ap­pro­pri­ate mo­ment to make a re­spect­ful but im­por­tant ap­peal. This com­pe­ti­tion rep­re­sents the pin­na­cle of re­gion­al Crick­et su­prema­cy. Win­ning this ti­tle means you are the best crick­et team in the Caribbean. Last year, our na­tion rec­og­nized and cel­e­brat­ed sport­ing ex­cel­lence when a na­tion­al award was based up­on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s CPL cham­pi­ons. That recog­ni­tion re­flect­ed the im­por­tance of ho­n­our­ing teams that bring pride and dis­tinc­tion to our coun­try through sport and achieve­ment. To­day we stand be­fore a tra­di­tion­al and To­ba­go team made up en­tire­ly of Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als, sons of our soil, who have now re­stored re­gion­al Crick­et su­prema­cy.

“There­fore, ladies and gen­tle­men, I re­spect­ful­ly, and I re­peat re­spect­ful­ly call up­on the gov­ern­ment and the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to ex­tend sim­i­lar cour­te­sies and recog­ni­tion to this Red Force team.”

Mean­while, in ap­plaud­ing the Red Force team’s as­cen­sion to the West In­dies Four-Day Cham­pi­onship ti­tle for the first time since 2006, Bas­sarath speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports on Wednes­day af­ter­noon, ex­pressed his per­son­al sense of sat­is­fac­tion and re­vealed that the out­come was the de­liv­ery of a promise made by for­mer play­ers Rayad Em­rit and Gibran Mo­hammed when they were ap­point­ed head coach and as­sis­tant coach, re­spec­tive­ly.

“Two years ago, Gibran and Rayad told me that by 2027, Trinidad and To­ba­go would be the re­gion­al four-day cham­pi­on,” said Bas­sarath. “They would have seen the ded­i­ca­tion and the qual­i­ty of our play­ers, and they would have come up with that. So I am very pleased, and I am quite sure all the mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive of TTCB are ex­treme­ly pleased with this ef­fort. Full con­grat­u­la­tions to Joshua and all the boys.”

Bas­sarath, who was sec­ond vice pres­i­dent of the TTCB at the time of T&T’s last re­gion­al four-day ti­tle 20 years ago, be­fore as­cend­ing to the pres­i­den­cy in 2009, was clear­ly re­lieved as well.

“It means a lot. This is the ti­tle that has been elud­ing us for quite some time. The play­ers want­ed this ti­tle bad­ly, you know, some of the se­nior play­ers, and we are ex­treme­ly hap­py that it has come this time. Peo­ple may say it is a short­ened tour­na­ment, and this is why we won, but we are very hap­py we are crowned at this time re­gion­al four-day cham­pi­ons,” he said.

Cap­tained by Joshua Da Sil­va, the Red Force de­throned Guyana, who have been cham­pi­ons of the tour­na­ment for the last three years, in fine style. Af­ter set­ting their op­po­nents 281 for vic­to­ry in a sec­ond in­nings built on Evin Lewis’ 122 on his re­gion­al first-class farewell, T&T’s bowl­ing at­tack blast­ed out Guyana for 139 in un­der two ses­sions. They were led ad­mirably by Jay­den Seales, who claimed 3 for 39; Ter­rence Hinds, who col­lect­ed 3 for 20; An­der­son Phillip, with fig­ures of 2 for 63; and Joshua James, who picked up 2 for 12.

Af­ter col­lect­ing the US$200,000 first prize, Da Sil­va es­chewed de­served praise for all of T&T’s main con­trib­u­tors through­out the tour­na­ment. The cap­tain al­so ac­knowl­edged the sup­port and con­tri­bu­tion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board (TTCB) to get the team over the line this year.

Bas­sarath re­turned the ac­claim, say­ing that he was es­pe­cial­ly thank­ful to wit­ness the growth of the team first-hand. “Some­times when I was at the crick­et cen­tre, I would look out and see them train­ing. In this tour­na­ment, they were well pre­pared, and they in­di­cat­ed to us that they felt that this is the year.”

It is on­ly the sixth time T&T has won the re­gion­al four-day ti­tle, with pre­vi­ous wins in 1969-1970, 1970-1971, 1975-76 (shared with Bar­ba­dos), 1984-85, and 2005-06, mak­ing T&T on­ly the fourth most suc­cess­ful team by ti­tles won, be­hind Bar­ba­dos (23), Guyana (13) and Ja­maica (12). There has been much more suc­cess in the re­gion­al 50-over tour­na­ment, where T&T leads the way with a record 14 wins, fol­lowed by Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos and Guyana, each with 9 ti­tles.

Bas­sarath said now that the 20-year drought has been bro­ken, he an­tic­i­pates more fre­quent suc­cess.

“This set of play­ers will know that the hard work they put in over the past two or three years is what was reaped to­day (Wednes­day). And I’m quite sure that we are go­ing to in­stil in the younger play­ers what it takes to win a tour­na­ment. The vic­to­ry al­so didn’t start yes­ter­day or last month or last year. This start­ed a long while ago.”

Bas­sarath stat­ed that at an ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing on May 31, there will be dis­cus­sions on how to cel­e­brate this achieve­ment, with pos­si­ble for­mal recog­ni­tion at the board’s planned an­nu­al awards func­tion sched­uled to hap­pen in late Sep­tem­ber or ear­ly Oc­to­ber this year.