West In­dies mid­dle or­der bats­man Nicholas Pooran was named the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) "In­ter­na­tion­al Play­er of the Year" when the TTCB held its award cer­e­mo­ny at the Cen­tre Point Mall in Ch­agua­nas, Sat­ur­day.

The left-hand­ed for­mer WI white-ball cap­tain was in tremen­dous form for the Caribbean team this cal­en­dar year and in fran­chise crick­et and new­ly mint­ed cap­tain Shai Hope stood head and shoul­ders above their team­mates dur­ing the ill-fat­ed ICC World Cup Qual­i­fiers in Zim­bab­we in which the two-time cham­pi­ons failed to qual­i­fy for the World Cup for the first time in its his­to­ry.

Pooran scored 428 runs in nine One Day In­ter­na­tion­als with two hun­dreds at an im­pres­sive av­er­age of 61, scor­ing a fur­ther 234 runs at an av­er­age of 39 in eight T20 in­ter­na­tion­als.

Dar­ren Bra­vo, the new cap­tain of the Red Force, was named the "Na­tion­al Play­er of the Year" for his hun­dreds at the re­gion­al lev­el.

Mer­ry­boys Crick­et Club, who re­gained pro­mo­tion to the Na­tion­al Pre­mier­ship I, was named the "Club of the Year" af­ter adding the Pre­mier­ship II North 50-over ti­tle to the Two-Day ti­tle which ear­li­er won them pro­mo­tion.

Marchin Sports, the Pre­mier­ship II South 50-over ti­tle and Two-Day ti­tle cham­pi­ons, who al­so gained pro­mo­tion to the Pre­mier­ship I, were al­so ac­knowl­edged for win­ning a hat-trick of ti­tles this year in­clud­ing the Pre­mier­ship II T20 ti­tle.

Speak­ing dur­ing the awards, Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) pres­i­dent Dr Kishore Shal­low praised the TTCB's de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme, de­scrib­ing it as a path sus­tain­able, win­ning crick­et, "Even­tu­al­ly, Crick­et West In­dies will adopt the pro­grammes from the T&T Crick­et Board.”

Shal­low al­so ac­knowl­edged that lo­cal and re­gion­al fans will be in for a treat as "2024 will be the biggest year in the his­to­ry of the West In­dies, as the re­gion will wel­come 20 teams to the Caribbean for the ICC T20 World Cup."

In her fea­ture ad­dress, Sports Min­is­ter, Sham­fa Cud­joe said "A bet­ter ath­lete is a stu­dent-ath­lete" as she en­cour­aged sports to take a big­ger role in the lives of chil­dren and called on clubs to step up as they would dis­ap­point many chil­dren if they don't run their af­fairs in a prop­er man­ner.

In prais­ing some ini­tia­tives im­ple­ment­ed by Cen­tral Sports for their work in the past year she called on oth­er clubs to fol­low this lead and not on­ly fo­cus on the big events. In stress­ing the im­por­tance of sports she said: "If we can spend mon­ey on pris­ons, we can spend mon­ey on sport so peo­ple will not go to pris­ons."

Cud­joe was hailed by TTCB pres­i­dent and CWI vice pres­i­dent Az­im Basarath as "our favourite Sports Min­is­ter", in ref­er­ence to a for­mer sports min­is­ter who had chas­tised the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) and by ex­ten­sion the TTCB and WICB in a re­cent so­cial me­dia post.

He re­mind­ed the for­mer min­is­ter, who served be­tween 2010 and 2014, that the CPL was sup­port­ed by the then gov­ern­ment in 2013 when it was launched, and the tour­na­ment has pro­vid­ed lo­cal and re­gion­al play­ers with op­por­tu­ni­ties, while the CWI has not held play­ers back from earn­ing mon­ey around the world.

A spe­cial award was pre­sent­ed to An­drew Ram­baran who cap­tured the Son­ny Ra­mad­hin Tro­phy as the "Youth Spin­ner of the Year".

Hon­orary awards for long and dis­tin­guished ser­vice to the de­vel­op­ment of crick­et went to Dud­nath Ramkissoon, Lal­man Kow­lessar (posthu­mous) and Patrick Ram­per­sad (posthu­mous­ly).

In oth­er awards, Bas­sarath was named the "Ad­min­is­tra­tor of the Year" and Am­mar Sama­roo was recog­nised for his "Ded­i­cat­ed Ser­vice to the TTCB".

Bren­dan Boodoo, the "Most Valu­able Play­er" (MVP) in the U-15 cat­e­go­ry, was al­so named the "Best Youth Play­er of the Year".

Oth­er out­stand­ing youth play­ers re­ward­ed and ap­plaud­ed were Reyad Jerome, the U-13 MVP, Aa­di­an Racha, the U-17 MVP and the U-19 MVP, An­drew Ram­baran.