Yvonne Webb

There was cel­e­bra­tion on the streets of Bar­rack­pore on Thurs­day night, as hun­dreds of vil­lagers turned out to give a hero's wel­come to mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Team, fresh from their vic­to­ry in In­dia and Guyana. Peo­ple lined the streets, while chil­dren wav­ing flags and bats, formed a guard of ho­n­our for the team mem­bers , in­clud­ing three sons of the soil, Cap­tain Dar­ren Gan­ga, his broth­er Sher­win and Samuel Badree. Amidst the ju­bi­la­tion, in­clud­ing po­et­ic and mu­si­cal ser­e­nades from Ravi B, Hunter and the Siparia Rhythm Sec­tion, came re­newed calls for Gan­ga to lead the West In­dies crick­et team.

Fi­fa vice pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er, who touched down in Trinidad be­tween flights to and from Nige­ria to cel­e­brate the team's achieve­ments, told Gan­ga to keep the faith be­cause noth­ing could keep a good cap­tain down. For­mer Ch­agua­nas Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Manohar Ram­saran joined the de­bate and urged the peo­ple of Bar­rack­pore and the coun­try to ral­ly around Gan­ga to en­sure he is se­lect­ed to cap­tain the flag­ship crick­et team. While ex­press­ing some dis­ap­point­ment with his non se­lec­tion to the team in Aus­tralia, Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Na­pari­ma Nizam Baksh said Gan­ga was still young. Baksh urged him to use the time to im­prove his skills as a bats­man so se­lec­tors would be con­strained to ap­point him to the team.

He held up the Gan­ga broth­ers and team mem­bers as pos­i­tive role mod­els and urged the youths to em­u­late them. In re­sponse, an emo­tion­al Gan­ga, over­come by the re­cep­tion, stayed away from the swel­ter­ing cap­tain­cy is­sue, but ex­pressed pride to lead the T&T team.

Gan­ga thanked the com­mu­ni­ty for their sup­port teach­ing him every­thing he knows. "Bar­rack­pore has taught me every­thing about my life, gave me all the nec­es­sary tools to be in this po­si­tion to­day, from learn­ing to play crick­et, to lessons of life, learn­ing to plant rice, cut sug­ar cane and above all, to be dis­ci­plined. The essence of good work ethics, to reap re­wards, to work hard to get re­sults and I think that is re­flec­tive of the peo­ple of Bar­rack­pore and for that I thank you."