Eigh­teen (18) of T&T’s most pro­lif­ic youth crick­eters have been work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly on re­fin­ing their in­di­vid­ual tal­ents through an in­tense spe­cial­ist pro­gramme cour­tesy bmo­bile and the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB), over the past four weeks.

Dubbed the bmo­bile Crick­et Acad­e­my, this de­vel­op­men­tal clin­ic bowled off at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre in Cou­va on Oc­to­ber 26.

It was es­pe­cial­ly de­signed to as­sist out­stand­ing crick­eters be­tween the ages of 17 and 20, who were iden­ti­fied by the TTCB as this na­tion’s top per­form­ers.

Mar­sha Ca­ballero, TSTT’s vice-pres­i­dent of Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, chimed in on this year's bmo­bile Crick­et Acad­e­my and was pleased to once again be a part of a na­tion­al sport­ing de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tive.

“As Trin­bag­o­ni­ans, crick­et plays an im­por­tant role in our so­cio-cul­tur­al fab­ric. It’s a big part of us. Sport unites us and pro­vides a pow­er­ful con­nec­tion for our peo­ple and na­tion. At bmo­bile, we will con­tin­ue sup­port­ing sport and its holis­tic de­vel­op­ment, es­pe­cial­ly at the youth lev­el,” said Ca­ballero.

These young­sters have so far been privy to elite in­di­vid­ual coach­ing on their men­tal and phys­i­cal aware­ness, mo­ti­va­tion­al sem­i­nars, in-depth train­ing ses­sions along­side high­ly qual­i­fied coach­es and sev­er­al oth­er el­e­ments of the gen­tle­man’s game which aids a smooth tran­si­tion out of the youth sys­tem and in­to the se­nior lev­el.

With four weeks still to go, the live-in camp has al­ready be­gun to de­rive sev­er­al suc­cess sto­ries from its vi­brant par­tic­i­pants and tu­tors.

A stand­out ath­lete, Justyn Gan­goo, re­layed his in­ti­mate ex­pe­ri­ence at the pro­gramme thus far and cred­it­ed the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions leader and lo­cal crick­et fra­ter­ni­ty for their time­ly in­sight in­to youth de­vel­op­ment.

“It’s the first time I’ve been ex­posed to such an in­tense regime,” said a smil­ing Gan­goo. “There have been a lot of lec­tur­ers, in­struc­tors and pos­i­tive in­flu­encers who have come in and helped us broad­en our ath­let­ic hori­zons on so many lev­els. The coach­es have been great­ly as­sist­ing us by point­ing out our mi­nor er­rors and it’s prov­ing to be high­ly pro­duc­tive.”

The left-arm spin­ner rem­i­nisced on his in­ter­ac­tions with ex-na­tion­al bowlers, Avidesh Sama­roo and Su­ru­j­dath Ma­habir, who played an in­te­gral role in their pre­sen­ta­tions to the tal­ent­ed bunch.

“Dur­ing my first week, Avidesh Sama­roo im­part­ed some knowl­edge to me to strength­en my bowl­ing strat­e­gy. As sim­ple as it was, I took his ad­vice and it has proven to be very ef­fec­tive.

"I have al­ready been see­ing the im­prove­ment in my own style. I’d al­so like to thank bmo­bile for this op­por­tu­ni­ty be­cause the knowl­edge gained here is in­valu­able,” he said.

Spear­head­ing the ex­pe­ri­enced line-up of cer­ti­fied in­struc­tors are for­mer na­tion­al play­ers, David and Kelvin Williams, Sama­roo, Ma­habir among oth­ers. Leg­endary bats­man and bmo­bile Brand Am­bas­sador, Bri­an Lara, is al­so ex­pect­ed to vis­it the young­sters with­in the com­ing weeks to im­part his wis­dom and un­der­stand­ing of the sport.

Lara and bmo­bile hold a long-stand­ing re­la­tion­ship and have played an in­stru­men­tal role in the de­vel­op­ment of youth crick­et on a na­tion­al scale hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly host­ed the "Fu­ture Stars Crick­et Pro­gramme" in 2016 and 2017.

“It’s all about fine-tun­ing the tal­ents of these young men,” said head coach David Williams fol­low­ing a psy­chol­o­gy lec­ture with the young­sters on Sun­day.

“We’re teach­ing them to en­hance their raw tal­ents to be­come bet­ter all-round crick­eters in all as­pects; on the field, so­cial­ly, men­tal­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly as well. Even though the 2018 sea­son is over, this camp serves as a launch­ing pad in­to the com­ing com­pet­i­tive cam­paign.”

Williams al­so praised his stu­dents for dis­play­ing a high lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism to­wards the pro­gramme which has been push­ing them to their ath­let­ic lim­its.

“These young men have the at­ti­tude of true pro­fes­sion­als. If they have al­ready adopt­ed this way of think­ing, and main­tain con­sis­ten­cy, then it augers well for T&T crick­et go­ing for­ward. We would like to open­ly thank bmo­bile for com­ing on board at this cru­cial de­vel­op­men­tal time in their bud­ding ca­reers,” he said.