Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board (TTCB) pres­i­dent Az­im Bas­sarath has ex­pressed con­cern about the de­vel­op­ment of women’s crick­et in the Caribbean, de­spite hail­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s re­cent suc­cess at the re­gion­al lev­el.

Bas­sarath raised the is­sue dur­ing a re­cep­tion held at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre for the T&T Un­der-19 women’s team, which cap­tured the Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) Ris­ing Stars Un­der-19 Cham­pi­onship in An­tigua in Au­gust.

“I am very con­cerned about the de­vel­op­ment of women’s crick­et,” Bas­sarath said.

The CWI vice-pres­i­dent point­ed to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s suc­cess in pro­duc­ing tal­ent­ed young play­ers but stressed that greater re­gion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion is need­ed if the West In­dies are to com­pete with the lead­ing women’s crick­et na­tions.

“We are very hap­py here in Trinidad and To­ba­go. We are pro­duc­ing cham­pi­ons, we have class play­ers who will go on to rep­re­sent the West In­dies Se­nior Women’s Team short­ly, but we must be able to com­pete in­ter­na­tion­al­ly with the West In­dies team,” he said.

“We must be able to match Eng­land, Aus­tralia, In­dia and so on. So we are go­ing to work with oth­er ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards.”

Bas­sarath was, how­ev­er, full of praise for the Un­der-19 cham­pi­ons, who not on­ly ex­celled on the field but al­so earned plau­dits for their dis­ci­pline and con­duct through­out the tour­na­ment.

He re­vealed that for­mer CWI pres­i­dent Ricky Sker­ritt, who at­tend­ed the com­pe­ti­tion to sup­port his daugh­ter, who rep­re­sent­ed the Lee­ward Is­lands, con­tact­ed him to com­mend the Trinidad and To­ba­go play­ers.

“He was ob­serv­ing the be­hav­iour of our girls, and as Anne right­ly said, you all were the most dis­ci­plined team, and you made Trinidad and To­ba­go very, very proud,” Bas­sarath said.

The TTCB pres­i­dent urged the young crick­eters to un­der­stand that their suc­cess al­so places greater re­spon­si­bil­i­ty on their shoul­ders as role mod­els for the next gen­er­a­tion.

“I ex­pect that you will go about your­selves in a very dig­ni­fied man­ner af­ter to­day and for the rest of your life, of course,” he said.

“But you must be the ones set­ting ex­am­ples, be­cause oth­er younger crick­eters who are 12, 13 years old are watch­ing you, and they want to be just like you.”

Bas­sarath al­so an­nounced that the TTCB in­tends to con­tin­ue im­prov­ing fa­cil­i­ties ded­i­cat­ed to women’s crick­et.

He said the board al­ready has a quo­ta­tion for work at the fa­cil­i­ty but ac­knowl­edged that the cost was high­er than an­tic­i­pat­ed.

“What we are do­ing, we have a quote al­ready that is a bit too high, but we are go­ing to work to make sure that be­fore you all leave for the next tour­na­ment in 2027, there will be a struc­ture on that side to ac­com­mo­date the play­ers and spec­ta­tors,” he said.

De­spite the need for fur­ther de­vel­op­ment, Bas­sarath said the play­ing sur­face had re­ceived pos­i­tive feed­back from the play­ers dur­ing their prepa­ra­tions.

“I was ask­ing some of the play­ers how the ball was com­ing through, and they were very hap­py with how the pitch was play­ing, and of course the out­field was prop­er­ly well rolled. Every­thing was in per­fect con­di­tion,” he said.

The re­cep­tion was de­layed to al­low sev­en mem­bers of the cham­pi­onship-win­ning squad to re­turn home af­ter re­main­ing in An­tigua as part of the West In­dies Un­der-19 camp.

Sama­ra Ram­nath, Bri­an­na Har­richa­ran, Am­ri­ta Ram­ta­hal, Jan­nah Mo­hammed, Shriya Jairam, Sian Ram­nar­ine and Jes­si­ca Davis re­turned at the end of Au­gust, ap­prox­i­mate­ly two weeks af­ter the tour­na­ment.

The play­ers were part of the West In­dies camp at Coolidge, where they worked un­der the guid­ance of head coach Ryan Austin as the re­gion­al pro­gramme con­tin­ued its prepa­ra­tions for the fu­ture.