The Har­vard Crick­et Clin­ic, which will open its 2026 sea­son on Sun­day (Jan­u­ary 4), will recog­nise one of its found­ing mem­bers, Lenny Kir­ton, dur­ing the 2026 sea­son.

The Clin­ic, which is in its 60th year and has pro­duced a num­ber of in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers in­clud­ing Bri­an Lara, Dwayne Bra­vo and Akeal Ho­sein, will be award­ing a $5,000 bur­sary in Kir­ton’s name to its most out­stand­ing grad­u­ate at the clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny in June.

The bur­sary will not on­ly be based on crick­et­ing ex­cel­lence but al­so take in­to ac­count the awardee’s ma­tu­ri­ty as it re­lates to dis­ci­pline, ed­u­ca­tion and so­cial skills.

Kir­ton, who died in 2012, was not on­ly a found­ing mem­ber of the Clin­ic but was in­stru­men­tal in en­sur­ing that sev­er­al young men who passed through its doors re­mained fo­cused on their ed­u­ca­tion and so­cial life.

His sis­ter Juli­et Brooks ex­pressed her thanks to the Ser­pen­tine Road-based Club for the ho­n­our.

“I am very hap­py to see that Lenny’s years of hard work and ded­i­ca­tion among the youths will be recog­nised. He was a very pri­vate man but I think re­mem­ber­ing him in this way is some­thing which will please him,” she said.

Two of Kir­ton’s stu­dents from the ear­ly 70s, Lester Cas­simy, a for­mer Trinidad and To­ba­go youth crick­et cap­tain, and Valenti­no Singh, one of the five young “Crick­eters of the Year” in 1974, have now tak­en over the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of man­ag­ing the Clin­ic.

The pair has em­barked on a re­brand­ing of the Clin­ic, and has promised a dif­fer­ent ap­proach to how things were done.

“Sport and crick­et, in par­tic­u­lar, have evolved sub­stan­tial­ly from the time we were young boys be­ing coached by Mr Kir­ton. For one, crick­et is no longer an am­a­teur sport in T&T; it is some­thing by which many young men can earn a liv­ing. In oth­er words, it’s a pro­fes­sion and we have to take that in­to ac­count go­ing for­ward,” not­ed Cas­simy.

The pair will be sup­port­ed by an­oth­er for­mer T&T youth play­er Umesh Per­sad, Na­dine Gon­za­les and ten ac­cred­it­ed coach­es.

Among the ar­eas of fo­cus will be pro­fes­sion­al coach­ing and skill de­vel­op­ment, mod­ern tech­niques and strate­gies, fit­ness and ath­let­ic con­di­tion­ing, men­tal skills and sports psy­chol­o­gy train­ing, match play and com­pet­i­tive ex­pe­ri­ence, in­di­vid­ual per­for­mance analy­sis and a lead­er­ship de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme.

The Clin­ic will cater for ages 5-18 years and fur­ther in­for­ma­tion can be ob­tained from 628-7597, 620-2728 or 773-3773.