The de­sire and com­mit­ment to have in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et tour­na­ments, such as the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) and the cur­rent ICC Un­der-19 Crick­et World Cup are be­ing called for to have lo­cal sports back in ac­tion.

Brent San­cho, a man of many caps, be­ing a for­mer Min­is­ter of Sports, Chair­man of the T&T Pro League and club own­er be­lieves there is an in­con­sis­ten­cy tak­ing place that is pre­vent­ing many sports­men and women from, not on­ly play­ing the sport of their choice but al­so pre­vent­ing them from earn­ing a liv­ing.

Min­is­ter of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe is said to be work­ing fever­ish­ly to en­sure that con­tact sports get back on the field.

In De­cem­ber last year, a pro­pos­al out­lin­ing the ap­proach to re­turn to con­tact sport this year (2022) was de­liv­ered to the Min­istry of Health and its line min­is­ter Ter­rance Deyals­ingh.

Cud­joe told Guardian Me­dia Sports the pro­pos­al seem to have met the ap­proval of the min­is­ter and his prin­ci­pal med­ical of­fi­cer and she was now await­ing an of­fi­cial re­sponse. How­ev­er, San­cho, while ap­plaud­ing the ef­forts of the min­is­ter, said she is mov­ing two years too late.

" I think they've been in­con­sis­tent in their ap­proach. Re­mem­ber T&T was the on­ly Caribbean is­land to host a ma­jor sport­ing event when there were no vac­cines and there was still a lot of fig­ur­ing out as it re­lates to the pan­dem­ic, this was the CPL tour­na­ment.

There would have been a sig­nif­i­cant amount of de­sire, a sig­nif­i­cant amount of want by the per­sons in charge, whether it be the min­istry of health, min­istry of sports and by ex­ten­sion the gov­ern­ment to put to­geth­er the CPL.

They would have sat with stake­hold­ers to en­sure that every 'I' was dot­ted and 'T' was crossed. Sim­i­lar­ly, the same sit­u­a­tion here now with the Un­der-19 crick­et tour­na­ment, and again a sig­nif­i­cant amount of will, so the ques­tion I am ask­ing is where is that will for lo­cal sports to re­sume.

Where is that will for the restart of con­tact sports with foot­ball, for the restart of con­tact sports with vol­ley­ball and bas­ket­ball, etc.

Re­mem­ber this is an is­land and a gov­ern­ment that turned down World Cup qual­i­fiers (be­tween T&T vs Guyana in March last year) be­cause they didn't want to al­low un­vac­ci­nat­ed per­sons on the is­land to play the sport, but here is it, you have a crick­et tour­na­ment be­ing played with both vac­ci­nat­ed and un­vac­ci­nat­ed," San­cho said.

The dread­locks for­mer T&T de­fend­er be­lieves lack of con­sul­ta­tion be­tween the gov­ern­ment, through its sports min­is­ter and the peo­ple on the ground, has pre­vent­ed what ac­tion from tak­ing place, not­ing that on­ly in T&T there has been no foot­ball.

" Un­til we have an ac­tu­al and fac­tu­al doc­u­ment from the min­istry of sports, and I think that is where the prob­lem is. Sit down with the stake­hold­ers, ex­plore the var­i­ous av­enues and have the same de­ter­mi­na­tion that they're hav­ing to host these tour­na­ments to make sure that it can come to fruition.

If you re­call, many of the pro­pos­als that have been sent on var­i­ous leagues, var­i­ous sports, were met with ab­solute si­lence on one hand and in some cas­es have been com­plete­ly re­butted.

At the end of the day, have the same want that you had to host the CPL when no­body else in the Caribbean want­ed to host any sport­ing tour­na­ments, as well as the same de­ter­mi­na­tion you have to host the un­der-19 crick­et tour­na­ment and just put some of that in­to lo­cal sports."

San­cho con­clud­ed: " It has been well doc­u­ment­ed that what­ev­er is used in the Eng­lish Pre­mier League may not work in Trinidad and To­ba­go, or the La Liga or the MLS, may not work in Trinidad and To­ba­go and vice ver­sa, be­cause what is clear is that vary­ing sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion have vary­ing ap­proach­es to­wards how they deal with sports in the pan­dem­ic, we've seen that.

The pan­dem­ic it­self is an evolv­ing sit­u­a­tion, so un­less you have those types of con­ver­sa­tions you wouldn't know how to go for­ward. For in­stance, look at Ja­maica and Guyana, they've had foot­ball tour­na­ments, they've played league games, they've had foot­ball of some sort, but what is the dom­i­nat­ing fac­tor is di­a­logue, a de­sire by all par­ties to want sports to play."

San­cho is chal­leng­ing any­one to look around the world and find a league that has been dor­mant for two years.