The much-anticipated elections of the T&T Cricket Board (TTCB) will take place on January 16 at the Alloy Lequay Administrative Centre at Balmain in Couva.
This was the decision taken by the cricket board members who gathered for a special meeting on Saturday at the National Cricket Centre in Couva.
President of the TTCB, Azim Bassarath told Guardian Media that the haste to have the elections shows that his group never wanted to avoid any elections.
“We met and the entire board decided that the elections will be held on January 16. We are all looking forward to these elections and we are hoping that all runs smoothly. We always wanted to get the legal matters out of the way in order to host the elections and now we are doing that.”
Bassarath added that the members also agreed for the three-man committee to take charge of the election process.
“We have come up with a three-man committee and they will oversee the elections to ensure that all is well. They are Attorney-at-law Ronald Simon, Andrew Lucky a former senior manager at Petrotrin and Amar Samaroo a former comptroller at the T&T Customs."
Bassarath who has been at the helm of the local board since 2009 will again throw his hat in the ring and he is expected to get a challenge from former West Indies cricketer Dinanath Ramnarine.
As far as any challenge goes the Moruga man said: “I am open to any challenge. We have done well administratively and we are looking forward to continuing. We have a good group of people who are in cricket, not for money but for love of country and we are confident that whoever poses a challenge, will be defeated.
“We welcome challenges because this is a democratic process and all those going up for elected posts, we want to wish them well. At the end of the day, no one is bigger than cricket and we want to have these elections out of the way and to get to, doing the work of running cricket efficiently as ever.”
Bassarath and the TTCB recently won a court matter against the National League representatives who had challenged the board’s constitution. The National League committee wanted the board to do away with the outgoing votes and they were championing a one club-one vote system but this was thrown out by the high court, making way for the elections to be held.