The fu­ture of women’s crick­et looks bright as the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) charts the re­turn of the lead­ing re­gion­al play­ers to the in­ter­na­tion­al Test are­na.

In ac­knowl­edg­ing that T&T has been at the top of the re­gion in the de­vel­op­ment of the sport for women, TTCB pres­i­dent Az­im Bas­sarath feels though that more re­spect and sup­port are need­ed.

With this in mind, the TTCB is plan­ning to host a se­ries of match­es fea­tur­ing the top lo­cal crick­eters in Au­gust in con­junc­tion with the T&T Women’s Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion.

This he hopes will lay the foun­da­tion for a rec­om­men­da­tion to Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) that Women’s Test Crick­et fea­tur­ing the Caribbean’s best makes a re­turn af­ter 18 years against the oth­er lead­ing na­tions.

“We must show more ap­pre­ci­a­tion to the women in the sport of crick­et to at­tract more in­ter­est and build on the ex­cel­lent club struc­ture that ex­ists lo­cal­ly,” said Bas­sarath.

In plan­ning for the re­sump­tion of crick­et for the 2022 sea­son, Bas­sarath said the TTCB had man­dat­ed that all TTCB zon­al af­fil­i­ates stage a sep­a­rate com­pe­ti­tion for women to en­cour­age par­tic­i­pa­tion.

Dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic when team sports were banned, the TTCB was qui­et­ly de­vel­op­ing an area south of the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre in Bal­main, Cou­va in­to two crick­et fields.

The ob­jec­tive was to ded­i­cate the grounds ex­clu­sive­ly for women’s crick­et and Bas­sarath said the of­fi­cial han­dover to the women’s as­so­ci­a­tion will be made to co­in­cide with the match­es in Au­gust.

“We recog­nise that the de­mands on the NCC ground and its fa­cil­i­ties are great, so a place which will be for women’s crick­et will give a big boost to their as­pi­ra­tions,” said Bas­sarath.

The area is al­ready in use and scores of fit­ness en­thu­si­asts, and fam­i­lies make use of the safe, se­cure area dai­ly and are grate­ful to the TTCB for mak­ing it ac­ces­si­ble for every­one.

Over the years, T&T has pro­duced sev­er­al out­stand­ing fe­male crick­eters in­clud­ing spin­ner Anisa Mo­hammed, who has been picked for the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) on the pres­ti­gious “One-Day Team of the Decade.”

Mo­hammed is al­so an ICC World Cup win­ner with the West In­dies and holds sev­er­al records for bowl­ing in the women’s game.

Bas­sarath said for­mer West In­dies and na­tion­al cap­tain/wick­et­keep­er Meris­sa Aguil­le­ria al­so dis­tin­guished her­self and is cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing coach­ing in­ter­ests to make a fur­ther mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tion to the game.

He said he was not sur­prised to learn that at the re­cent CWI Women’s Cham­pi­onship in Guyana, Aguil­le­ria was treat­ed as a great am­bas­sador of the game.

Al­so mak­ing a big name for her­self is Sta­cy Ann King who like Aguil­le­ria re­tired from the game but is eas­i­ly recog­nis­able as an in­ter­na­tion­al tele­vi­sion pun­dit in the men’s and women’s games.

Among lo­cal play­ers who are among the afore­men­tioned stars who have tak­en T&T crick­et to the top of the lad­der is Brit­ney Coop­er.

Bas­sarath said T&T has a long tra­di­tion of pro­duc­ing women crick­et stars fore­most of whom is Ann Browne-John who cap­tained the na­tion­al team and played both hock­ey and crick­et for T&T.

Browne-John is a re­gion­al women’s se­lec­tor, the live-wire of the Women’s As­so­ci­a­tion and an ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of the TTCB whose ex­pe­ri­ence and ex­per­tise are high­ly val­ued.

Her sis­ter Ma­jorie Browne, re­cent­ly de­ceased, al­so played crick­et at a top-lev­el and was a dri­ving force, es­pe­cial­ly in To­ba­go.