Pow­er­Gen crick­et club re­cent­ly won the UNI­COM UWI T20 ti­tle, the first tour­na­ment of the do­mes­tic crick­et sea­son when it de­feat­ed a star-stud­ded Cane Farm out from Arou­ca.

Pow­er­Gen came up against the de­fend­ing cham­pi­on team in the fi­nal and need­ing two runs off the last ball, skip­per An­cil Bha­gan clipped Lendl Sim­mons to deep square leg, ran two and the cel­e­bra­tions start­ed. The win against a side con­tain­ing the top rat­ed Sunil Nar­ine, Sim­mons, Rayad Em­rit and a host of oth­er na­tion­al play­ers did not sur­prise chair­man Chaitram Ramjits­ingh. "The win did not sur­prise me be­cause we have a team. The guys, ex­cept Evin Lewis may not have the star pow­er, but they played to­geth­er. The key was keep­ing my unit to­geth­er and us­ing a core group of men from the club. Hav­ing said that we were al­so served well by our re­cruit­ed play­er in Daron Cruick­shank.

"Pow­er­Gen crick­et club start­ed a de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme way back and the fruits of that is start­ing to show. We have pro­duced a num­ber of in­ter­na­tion­al and re­gion­al play­ers right here at Syne Vil­lage in Pe­nal. Right now our bats­man Ja­son Mo­hammed is the Windies vice-cap­tain at the World Cup qual­i­fiers in Zim­bab­we. We have al­so pro­duced the likes of Samuel Badree who at times was rat­ed the num­ber-one slow bowler in the world in T20 crick­et. Al­so play­ing his crick­et right here from a ten­der age is Lewis. He has gone through the ranks right here at the club and now he is big news on the in­ter­na­tion­al scene when it comes to T20 crick­et."

Ramjits­ingh added that the club's am­bi­tious de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme has pro­duced teams for the Sir Gary Sobers crick­et fes­ti­val in Bar­ba­dos, which they have been at­tend­ing for years. To come on stream lat­er this year will be an un­der-13 team and an un­der-15 team which is sched­ule to trav­el to Mi­a­mi to play in tour­na­ments there.

Ramjits­ingh who played his crick­et for Clarke Road many years ago is full of praise for Pow­er­Gen. "We have been very for­tu­nate to have the com­pa­ny's back­ing and they have re­al­ly tak­en care of the play­ers down here. They have been very help­ful and we have re­paid them by pro­duc­ing ex­cel­lent cit­i­zens at the club. The in­vest­ment in our in­door nets is pay­ing off and this shows the com­mit­ment of the com­pa­ny to the youths of T&T. We've worked hard at the club to make life bet­ter for the play­ers. We con­tin­ue to im­prove and mod­ernise our set-up at Syne Vil­lage. In ad­di­tion to the in­door nets we're now out­fit­ting the space with cam­eras so that play­ers can analyse their game af­ter bat­ting. We've added a con­fer­ence room which is used a lot in our plan­ning. Al­so at­tached to the in­door build­ing are dor­mi­to­ries for our play­ers who want to stay and al­so for live-in camps.

"The en­tire project has been cost­ly and in ad­di­tion to the gen­er­ous help from our spon­sors Pow­er­Gen, we've found nov­el ways to raise funds for the club be­cause we know that we have a prod­uct of val­ue."

CAP­TION: This is the plan! Chair­man of Pow­er­Gen Crick­et club us­ing the club's con­fer­ence room to plan for more suc­cess, watched by crick­et coach Stephen Ramkissoon.

<Crick­et mush­room­ing in Pe­nal/Debe>

Crick­et in the Pe­nal/Debe re­gion has been spread­ing like wild­fire as more and more teams are com­ing out to play the sport. With the ad­vent of the T20 for­mat play­ers are re­turn­ing to the game be­cause they're now avail­able for the short pe­ri­od away from work.

Mak­ing ma­jor push to get more crick­et played in the re­gion is Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Oropouche East Dr. Roodal Mooni­lal, who has been mak­ing a per­son­al in­vest­ment to as­sist clubs fi­nan­cial­ly to come back out and play the game. Many clubs that be­came de­funct over the years are now dust­ing their gears and com­ing out to play. Ac­cord­ing to Mooni­lal,"We need the to­tal­ly oc­cu­py the youths so that they don't get in­to de­viant be­hav­iour. When young men are rest­less they can get up to all kinds of mis­chief and this we must avoid. We need to get them in­volved in mean­ing­ful ac­tiv­i­ties and sport is one of the ma­jor ones. I have de­cid­ed to do my part to en­sure that as many clubs come for­ward so that the youths will be en­gaged.

"I re­mem­ber when I was a young man I played sport, but not at any big lev­el, as my stud­ies oc­cu­pied most of my time, but at the end of the day I was do­ing some­thing mean­ing­ful. I had to be oc­cu­pied most of the times and the same goes for the young men in so­ci­ety to­day. We talk about crime and try­ing to find ways to deal with it and one of the ways is to use sport as we did when we were in gov­ern­ment with the Hoop of Life pro­gramme."

Last week. Mooni­lal brought on yet an­oth­er team to play crick­et, this time Debe Dare­dev­ils and they have al­ready got­ten a num­ber of mem­bers sign­ing up to play.

CAP­TION: Dr. Roodal Mooni­lal, left, col­lects his crick­et shirt from man­ag­er of Debe Dare­dev­ils Vi­jay Sub­ran at right with skip­per Shsatri Ma­haraj look­ing on.

<BASE con­tin­ues youth

de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme>

The Badree's Acad­e­my of Sport Ed­u­ca­tion con­tin­ued its pro­gramme to de­vel­op the youth of our na­tion when it re­sumed it's op­er­a­tions re­cent­ly at it's Pow­er­gen Pe­nal base. With over 100 boys and girls reg­is­tered for the 10 month pro­gramme, the Acad­e­my seeks to pro­mote healthy lifestyles and holis­tic de­vel­op­ment through the sport of crick­et. The Acad­e­my runs every Mon­day from 4 pm to 5.30pm and Sat­ur­days from 9 am to 10 am and caters for boys and girls from the age of five to 15 years old. BASE is chaired by West In­di­an crick­eter Samuel Badree and has on its staff qual­i­fied and ex­pe­ri­enced coach­es who are pas­sion­ate about youth de­vel­op­ment. Badree re­in­forced the need for such pro­grammes es­pe­cial­ly in light of the ab­sence of ac­tiv­i­ties to keep young peo­ple mean­ing­ful­ly en­gaged. "BASE is com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to young boys and girls to de­vel­op their phys­i­cal and crick­et­ing abil­i­ties as well as their so­cial and in­ter­per­son­al skills. We would like to thank our spon­sors TECU, Pow­er­gen and TGU, who have part­nered with us to en­sure the pro­gramme is ac­ces­si­ble to all chil­dren no mat­ter what their fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion is," Badree added.

On Sat­ur­day BASE played a prac­tice match against the San Fran­cique Pres­by­ter­ian School at Pow­er­gen Pe­nal. The match was keen­ly con­test­ed as BASE came away as vic­tors . There was al­so a Fi­nan­cial Lit­er­a­cy and Man­age­ment Sem­i­nar held with par­ents keep­ing in mind the eco­nom­ic chal­lenges fac­ing the coun­try. This was con­duct­ed by Ri­car­do Al­bert from TECU.

Scores: San Fran­cique Pres­by­ter­ian School 83/6 in 15 overs (Ryan Su­per­sad 17, Travis Mans­ingh 9, Kyle Ma­hadeo 2-17, Rober­to Badree 1-13 Rayad Khan 1-8, Sajiv Ghu­ran 2-5) vs BASE 89/4 (Ter­rell Knutt 18, Mick­el Sookdeo 10, Joshau De­onath 1-7)

CAP­TION: Samuel Badree, third from left, and his crew mak­ing a dif­fer­ence.

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