Vin­ode Mam­chan

For­mer Trinidad and To­ba­go and West In­dies bats­man Lar­ry Gomes said yes­ter­day that it is nice to be re­mem­bered, af­ter your play­ing days are over.

He made the com­ments at an of­fi­cial cer­e­mo­ny held in his ho­n­our by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), at the Sir Frank Wor­rell crick­et ground at St Au­gus­tine.

Gomes re­ceived a plaque and a cheque from UWI as a mark of re­spect for his con­tri­bu­tion to crick­et in the West In­dies. He fol­lows a long list of for­mer West In­dies crick­eters who have been ho­n­oured by UWI. Among them are Sir Viv Richards, Gus Lo­gie, Gor­don Greenidge, Jef­frey Du­jon, Desmond Haynes, Joel Gar­ner, Michael Hold­ing, Mal­colm Mar­shall, Andy Roberts, Richie Richard­son, Curt­ly Am­brose, Court­ney Walsh, Jim­my Adams, Ian Bish­op, Ri­d­ley Ja­cobs, Roger Harp­er and Irv­ing Shilling­ford.

Gomes in his ap­pre­ci­a­tion speech said: "As a past in­ter­na­tion­al crick­eter, it is al­ways nice to be re­mem­bered on oc­ca­sion and I was very hum­bled and ap­pre­cia­tive, when I was told that I would be rec­og­nized this morn­ing.

"I was ho­n­oured and priv­i­leged to play 60 Tests for West In­dies and though my record may not bear sta­tis­ti­cal com­par­i­son with the likes of Bri­an Lara or Sachin Ten­dulkar, I hope that I played the role that was re­quired of me with rea­son­able suc­cess."

Gomes who played 60 Test match­es for the West In­dies scored 3,171 runs with nine cen­turies and a high­est score of 143.

The Ari­ma res­i­dent con­tin­ued: "Crick­et cer­tain­ly opened many doors, not the least of which was to meet count­less won­der­ful in­di­vid­u­als all over the world and to trav­el to amaz­ing coun­tries that most peo­ple on­ly dream about. I know I am a very lucky guy.

"My wife, chil­dren and large fam­i­ly net­work have sup­port­ed me through thick and thin through­out the years, and I view to­day's short cer­e­mo­ny as a trib­ute to their on­go­ing en­cour­age­ment which al­lowed me to ful­fill my crick­et­ing dream."