Sama­ki Fe­li­cian

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

For a woman who has won many ac­co­lades in her ca­reer, for­mer West In­dies women’s cap­tain Meris­sa Aguilleira’s na­tion­al award is set apart. Her in­ter­na­tion­al ca­reer in the sport of crick­et spanned over a decade, and she touched every con­ti­nent in the world, but Aguilleira ad­mits that be­ing recog­nised by her own coun­try is sig­nif­i­cant and spe­cial.

The Moru­ga res­i­dent was award­ed the Hum­ming­bird Medal Gold at the 2024 Re­pub­lic Day Na­tion­al Awards Cer­e­mo­ny at Pres­i­dent’s house last Tues­day.

This is one of T&T’s high­est ho­n­ours award­ed to a cit­i­zen who dis­plays loy­al and de­vot­ed ser­vices that ben­e­fit T&T. In Aguilleira’s case, the achieve­ment cel­e­brates her enor­mous con­tri­bu­tions to the T&T na­tion­al women’s team, the West In­dies women’s team, and her fur­ther con­tri­bu­tions to the sport on the is­land and around the re­gion.

Mere days af­ter re­ceiv­ing the award, Aguilleira spoke to the WE mag­a­zine, ad­mit­ting that she was filled with mixed emo­tions through­out the process of be­ing award­ed the medal.

She thought of her late fa­ther, who was a pil­lar of sup­port in both her per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al en­deav­ours. She went fur­ther in adding the sense of hap­pi­ness she felt from be­ing ap­pre­ci­at­ed for her years of hard work on and off the crick­et field.

The 38-year-old al­so ex­pressed her grat­i­tude to­wards the na­tion, ex­plain­ing how much this award means to her.

“Com­ing from my coun­try means a lot be­cause I would of­ten lis­ten to peo­ple say that you are not re­spect­ed in your home and the places that you live, so to me know­ing that my coun­try ap­pre­ci­ates what I have done and they award­ed me with this award, I am re­al­ly grate­ful,” the for­mer wick­et­keep­er said.

While Aguilleira called time on a dis­tin­guished in­ter­na­tion­al ca­reer five years ago, she plans on us­ing the award “to in­spire the younger gen­er­a­tion of up­com­ing crick­eters” and her fel­low cit­i­zens by lend­ing her as­sis­tance in or­der to di­rect them on the right path.

It’s yet an­oth­er ma­jor achieve­ment for a woman who grew up in hum­ble be­gin­nings in the small vil­lage of Marac, Moru­ga, far away from the towns and cities.

Aguilleira start­ed her crick­et jour­ney at the age of eight, play­ing on the streets, but she said she fell in love with the sport when look­ing at an ac­tu­al game.

“When I was in sec­ondary school, I re­mem­ber my un­cles had a team called Strength Strong Unit­ed, and I re­mem­ber they had a game, and I went to the Sa­van­nah to look at the game, and I looked at crick­et and fell in love with it, and when I sat down and I looked at every­thing that was hap­pen­ing, I said, ‘This is what I want to play.’”

It’s a path that would lead Aguilleira in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. Hav­ing played for the T&T women’s crick­et team, her in­cred­i­ble tal­ent and dri­ve would cat­a­pult her in­to the West In­dies women’s team.

In Ju­ly 2008, she made her de­but against the Nether­lands. It was on­ly the be­gin­ning. She would go on to ap­pear in 112 One Day In­ter­na­tion­als and 95 Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­als in her ca­reer. Dur­ing her pro­fes­sion, she played as a wick­et­keep­er/bat­ter, where she has over 100 dis­missals in ODI crick­et.

She cap­tained the West In­dies Women from 2009 to 2015, where she led the team to the fi­nal of the ICC Women’s World Cup in In­dia in 2013, the se­mi-fi­nals of the ICC Women’s World T20 in 2010, 2012, and 2014, and was part of the 2016 ICC Women’s World T20 win­ning team in Kolkata, which was the biggest achieve­ment in her ca­reer.

She re­called that day in April at the fa­mous Eden Gar­dens, “I was speech­less at first, but when I got back to my room in In­dia, it was then it hit me that I am a world cham­pi­on, and I re­mem­bered that stage; it was re­al­ly dif­fi­cult for me as one of the coach­es told me when we were in South Africa that you are not good enough, but I re­mem­bered just re­peat­ing in my head that I am good enough, and when we made it to the World Cup. It was a dif­fer­ent ball game, and I was good enough, and now I am a World Cup cham­pi­on.”

Aguilleira an­nounced her re­tire­ment from crick­et in April 2019 af­ter an il­lus­tri­ous 11-year ca­reer. Af­ter her re­tire­ment, she found her­self try­ing to help im­prove and de­vel­op com­mu­ni­ties across the Caribbean through sport. Her work con­tin­ues.

She said, “I’m present­ly work­ing at SporTT as a sports de­vel­op­ment of­fi­cer, so I am re­al­ly en­joy­ing that field be­cause it gives me the op­por­tu­ni­ty to as­sist youths and de­vel­op dif­fer­ent strate­gies, plans, and pro­grammes that could as­sist them and bring back sport to the com­mu­ni­ties and the na­tion.”

Aguilleira fur­ther ex­pressed her ap­pre­ci­a­tion to her fam­i­ly, close friends, and coach­es, say­ing they helped her through­out her ca­reer and af­ter her play­ing days.

She added, “Mr Win­ston Trum­pet saw my tal­ent, and he came to my par­ents ask­ing to al­low me to go to Cou­va and play crick­et with his club, and they gave him the op­por­tu­ni­ty, and he did not back down. He stuck with me through thick and thin be­cause I had a lot of tri­als and tribu­la­tions through­out my ca­reer, and he has al­ways been there with me.”

Aguilleira said her main fo­cus was her job be­cause she wants to help bring back T&T to its right­ful place, pre­vent­ing young peo­ple from go­ing in­to a life of crime and fo­cus­ing more on sport.

She be­lieves youths are the fu­ture, and in the same way she went from play­ing street crick­et to win­ning a World Cup, she wants the same for every young per­son in the na­tion.