Lo­cal fast food restu­rant-chain, KFC has de­cid­ed to bring smiles to the sleepy vil­lage of Clarke Road with a $650,000 in­vest­ment in­to the com­mu­ni­ty-base crick­et club over the next two years, which will al­low the club to com­pete in the top flight of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s crick­et Pre­mier­ship Di­vi­sion for the 2026 sea­son.

The of­fi­cial launch took place at KFC’s out­let in Gulf View, La Ro­maine on Thurs­day, and was at­tend­ed by Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers TKR star Nicholas Pooran, who is a prod­uct of the club.

KFC and Piz­za Hut’s vice-pres­i­dent Roger Ramb­harose made the an­nounce­ment, say­ing, “We be­lieve in not on­ly serv­ing great food but al­so serv­ing the com­mu­ni­ty, and as a re­sult, we have de­cid­ed to spon­sor Clarke Road Crick­et Club to the tune of $650,000 over the next two years.

He said, “Clarke Road is a club of re­silience and ex­cel­lence and has pro­vid­ed a great foun­da­tion to many top play­ers, in­clud­ing Nico­las Pooran, who we are all so very proud of. We have sup­port­ed TKR, Crick­et360, and KR­CA, and now you add Clarke Road and Giskar Acad­e­my as part of the ecosys­tem. We are go­ing to en­sure that Clarke Road is the num­ber one club in the coun­try and one of the best in the wider re­gion. We are hap­py to have Pooran in­clud­ed be­cause we know how much he is vest­ed in the de­vel­op­ment of youths.”

Clarke Road’s pres­i­dent, Bal­dath Ma­habir, was on hand to thank KFC for their kind de­liv­ery of the spon­sor­ship.

He said, “At Clarke Road we dream, and this is all part of that. Com­merce dri­ves sports, and if you look back, you will see that the ur­ban ar­eas were al­ways well fed in terms of sports be­cause of com­merce. As an ex­am­ple of how much com­merce dri­ves sports, the rur­al Point Fortin area, af­ter be­com­ing in­dus­tri­alised, at­tract­ed great sports­men all be­cause of fund­ing. We are a rur­al-based club, and be­cause of our suc­cess and in­tegri­ty, we have been able to at­tract a cor­po­rate gi­ant like KFC to part­ner with us. We have dreams, but we can­not do it alone. KFC comes at a very cru­cial time for us, and we thank them for this.”

He said, "We are very proud of what Clarke Road has achieved. A win­ning sto­ry is KFC and the Colonel. The Colonel gained suc­cess at a late stage but nev­er gave up. This should be a les­son for the club and its mem­bers."

Al­so present at the launch were cap­tain of the club Yan­nick Ot­t­ley, Nicholas Sookdeosingh and coach­es Gre­go­ry Ma­habir and Mukesh Per­sad.

Ma­habir said, “Clubs like Clarke Road lead to char­ac­ter build­ing for young peo­ple, and we must en­cour­age them. For this, I thank KFC for com­ing on board to as­sist the us with this na­tion­al ef­fort. Fo­cus on the Wil­son Road club and the crick­et ground will con­tin­ue, and we aim to bring­ing the fa­cil­i­ty up to an ac­cept­able play­ing venue.”