Naz Ya­coob

The West In­dies Play­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (WIPA), in con­junc­tion with the T&T Crick­et Board (T&TCB) and the Guyana Crick­et Board (GCB) have joined forces to stage a char­i­ty match to raise funds for Haiti which was rav­aged by an earth­quake on Tues­day. The char­i­ty match will fea­ture T&T and Guyana in a T20 en­counter which will be played un­der-lights on Wednes­day at the the Queen's Park Oval in Port-of-Spain, from 6 pm. This was re­vealed in hasti­ly arranged press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, at the BPTT Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Suite at the Oval.

CEO and pres­i­dent of WIPA, Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine said the pub­lic at­ten­dance in this match will be a tan­gi­ble man­i­fes­ta­tion of the con­cern and in­ter­est they have for the thou­sands of vic­tims and fam­i­lies as well as the suf­fer­ings be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced by the en­tire pop­u­la­tion in the af­ter­math of this nat­ur­al dis­as­ter. "We at WIPA would like to take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­vey our sin­cer­est con­do­lences to the be­reaved fam­i­lies and the peo­ple of Haiti on the tragedy that has be­fall­en them," Ram­nar­ine stat­ed. The for­mer T&T and West In­dies leg-spin­ner ex­pressed his thanks to the many cor­po­rate spon­sors that came for­ward to as­sist and pledge sup­port with one phone call, in­clud­ing the Queen's Park Oval, b/mo­bile, Caribbean Air­lines, Hy­att Ho­tel and Toy­ota T&T.

"Last, but by no means least, the T&TCB, for the co-op­er­a­tion and ac­tion shown in en­sur­ing that all arrange­ments were made with WIPA, to bring about this game. It just goes to show what can be achieved by co-op­er­a­tion when all the bod­ies in­volved in crick­et in the re­gion can put their heads to­geth­er and work for the bet­ter­ment of the game," Ram­nar­ine added. In his short ad­dress, Pres­i­dent of the T&TCB, Az­im Bas­sarath, ex­tend­ed sym­pa­thy to the peo­ple of Haiti.

"How­ev­er, I am pleased to in­form you that work­ing close­ly with WIPA and its pres­i­dent, Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine, we have been able to get the na­tion­al crick­et team of Guyana, the T&T crick­et team, air­lines, hote­liers, com­mu­ni­ca­tions firms and oth­ers to join us in this wor­thy cause for the night game on Wednes­day," Bas­sarath said. Among the play­ers who will be in ac­tion are Guyana's Test play­ers–Sew­nar­ine Chat­ter­goon, Travis Dowl­in and Nars­ingh De­onar­ine and Daren Gan­ga, De­nesh Ramdin, Lendl Sim­mons and Dave Mo­hammed of T&T. Ad­mis­sion is $60 and there will be sev­er­al do­na­tions box­es at the play­ing venue.