Fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of the zon­al Un­der-15 tour­na­ment, the out­stand­ing per­form­ers will test their skills against each oth­er in the Vasha Foods North/South Clas­sic at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre in Bal­main, Cou­va, to­day from 9.30 am. The match will al­so be the fi­nal dress re­hearsal for the play­ers to ad­dress the na­tion­al se­lec­tors.

Ac­cord­ing to Az­im Bas­sarath, the pres­i­dent of the T&T Crick­et Board, this sea­son can be de­scribed as a wa­ter­shed stage in the for­ma­tive de­vel­op­ment of our U-15 crick­eters.

In recog­nis­ing the enor­mous pool of tal­ent that has been iden­ti­fied, the TTCB is con­tin­u­ing its dri­ve to max­imise the op­por­tu­ni­ties that are be­ing ex­tend­ed to the young men.

He said, “Last month, we were here to pro­claim to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty the start of the 2025 TTCB crick­et sea­son, which we aus­pi­cious­ly bowled off with the Un­der-15 In­ter Zone Tour­na­ment.

“We are pleased to an­nounce that on­ly on Thurs­day, South West Zone was crowned 2026 Bess Mo­tors Un­der-15 cham­pi­on in a thrilling vic­to­ry against Cen­tral Zone.”

Lead­ing up to the tour­na­ment, it was recog­nised that there were nu­mer­ous tal­ent­ed un­der-15 crick­eters who, through no fault of their own, could not make the cut on the zone’s first team.

Bas­sarath point­ed out that many were down­heart­ed and dis­ap­point­ed; the com­pe­ti­tion for places was hard-fought, so the TTCB was suc­cess­ful in find­ing a spon­sor for a Re­serve Team U-15 Zon­al Tour­na­ment to catch that group of young­sters who were des­tined to look on.

This Re­serve U-15 com­pe­ti­tion was com­plet­ed on Sat­ur­day when North/Cen­tral claimed the Evo­lu­tion Fit­ness Gym cham­pi­onship ho­n­ours in a keen­ly fought fi­nal at the NCC.

“I say all of this as a pre­lude to why we are here this morn­ing, which puts the prover­bial ic­ing on the cake and ex­press­es our grat­i­tude to an­oth­er friend of crick­et who con­tin­ues to demon­strate ad­mirable cor­po­rate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in the in­ter­est of na­tion­al youth de­vel­op­ment,” said Bas­sarath.

Fol­low­ing the clas­sic match, the Ris­ing Stars team will be se­lect­ed to trav­el to An­tigua for the Crick­et West In­dies re­gion­al tour­na­ment.

Al­ready sev­er­al young men have put their hands up, in­clud­ing all-rounder Ni­tyum Mon­gru, “Play­er of the Best Mo­tors U-15 Tour­na­ment”; bats­man K’Hill Thomas; bowler Ar­nal­do Prem­c­hand; and spin­ner Saveer Ram­baran.

Vasha Foods has pre­vi­ous­ly shown its un­stint­ing sup­port for our na­tion’s youth in the TTCB crick­et de­vel­op­ment tour­na­ments.

The re­newed part­ner­ship in 2026 is warm­ly wel­comed for the gold­en op­por­tu­ni­ty hand­ed to the U-15s in the North/South Clas­sic.

Bas­sarath thanked Vasha Foods, along with Bess Mo­tors and Evo­lu­tion Fit­ness, for com­ing for­ward to sup­port the TTCB youth de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme and the fu­ture of T&T and West In­dies crick­et by ex­ten­sion.

Squads

SOUTH: K’Hill Thomas (cap­tain), Ke­shav Mon­gru (vice-cap­tain), Kaveed Kat­wa­roo, Ronal­do Siewsankar, Gio­van­ni Mc Knight, Luke Ram­lal, Vashisht Jagdeo, Ay­den Ram­ta­hal, Kay­don Manohar, Am­rit Ma­haraj, Ni­tyum Mon­gru, Chris­tiano Be­har­ry, Es­hanan De­op­er­sad, Ar­nal­do Prem­c­hand. Man­ag­er: Elvis Ramdeo; coach: San­jay Ram­jat­tan.

NORTH: San­jiv Bachu (cap­tain), Davis Guer­ra (vice-cap­tain), Eli­jah Fuentes, Mar­ley Richards, Isa­iah Ed­wards, Zi­dane Woods, Za­heem Ali, Ky­muel Lynch, Josh Cum­ber­batch, Samir Boodoo, Ray­han Good­ing, De­vish Thomas, Larell Guisep­pi and Levi Burke. Man­ag­er: Kevin Joseph; coach: Clint Pam­phille.