When teams win ti­tles the play­ers get all the ac­co­lades but this time around the coach of the suc­cess­ful Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR), Bren­dan Mc­Cul­lum, is heap­ing prais­es on man­ag­er Col­in Bor­de af­ter his team won the 2020 Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) crown, to record their fourth lien on the tro­phy.

TKR de­feat­ed the St Lu­cia Zouks in the fi­nal of the tour­na­ment on Thurs­day at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba, to take away the ti­tle. They be­came the first team to play un­beat­en for the en­tire sea­son, win­ning all 12 match­es on the trot.

Mc­Cul­lum speak­ing about the im­por­tance of the man­ag­er said: “'Man­age' has a deep un­der­stand­ing about T&T, he cares dear­ly about T&T and is well con­nect­ed in T&T and this works for us. He gar­ners re­spect with the lo­cal guys who love and re­spect him dear­ly. The way he wel­comes the over­seas guys is al­so tremen­dous. They are in­clud­ed as friends and well-tak­en cared of. Col­in is a mas­sive pos­i­tive for the TKR side.”

Bor­de has now won four CPL ti­tles, as he was man­ag­er of the T&T Red Steel which won the ti­tle in 2015 as well and then three ti­tles un­der the TKR ban­ner.

"Col­in has four ti­tles and he has been the con­stant. Coach­es come and go but he has re­mained there and my role is made easy be­cause of Col­in. Noth­ing is ever a prob­lem. He makes things move, is­sues are dealt with of­fi­cial­ly.

"He breaks things down, process­es them and then strate­gi­cal­ly put them back to­geth­er for pos­i­tive out­comes.”

The New Zealan­der al­so poked fun at Bor­de say­ing: “He is re­al fun, talks a bit too much but he is the heart­beat of the team. I am lucky to have him there. We work re­al­ly well to­geth­er. We have all found our niche in this my sec­ond year and as a new sup­port staff they have done well.”

Mc­Cul­lum, who play­er un­der Bor­de’s man­age­ment be­fore turn­ing coach, stressed the im­por­tance of off the field sup­port.

“Suc­cess has a lot to do with struc­ture off the field and this we have. 'Man­age' is a cham­pi­on bloke and we love him.”

Bor­de’s four CPL ti­tles came in 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2020, while he man­aged the T&T Red Force to the sec­ond spot in the Cham­pi­ons League in 2009. He man­aged the T&T Red Force when it fin­ished sec­ond in the Re­gion­al Four-Day tour­na­ment back in 2009. In ad­di­tion to this, he got stints as man­ag­er of the West In­dies A team and al­so the Pres­i­dent’s XI. His suc­cess rate is tremen­dous as his Red Force team won the Stan­ford Tro­phy in 2009, while they twice won the Re­gion­al Su­per50 in 2008 and 2009.

Away from the crick­et field, he is al­so a di­rec­tor at the firm Dream Big Man­age­ment, a play­er man­age­ment group, di­rec­tor - one-man out­fit a videog­ra­phy and pho­tog­ra­phy com­pa­ny, di­rec­tor at House Hunters Re­al Es­tate and a con­sul­tant at CB2000 Lim­it­ed.

Added to all this, Bor­de is a com­mer­cial pi­lot and al­so served on the ex­ec­u­tive of the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB). He is al­so a for­mer mem­ber of the Crick­et West In­dies mar­ket­ing com­mit­tee and a for­mer sports con­sul­tant for the gov­ern­ment on com­pli­ance when it came to deal­ing with Na­tion­al Gov­ern­ing Bod­ies.