Vin­ode Mam­chan

T&T all rounders Dwayne Bra­vo and Ke­iron Pol­lard will still be able to play for the West In­dies crick­et team de­spite blank­ing re­tain­er con­tracts that were of­fered to them. Vice-pres­i­dent of the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) Dave Cameron said: "All they have to do is take part in the re­gion­al tour­na­ments." Cameron was at the time de­liv­er­ing an ad­dress at the T&T Crick­et Board's (TTCB) sym­po­sium at the Preysal High School. Bra­vo and Pol­lard re­cent­ly de­clined an of­fer from the WICB to ac­cept cen­tral re­tain­ers. They are now con­sid­ered free­lance crick­eters.

Cameron al­so men­tioned the re­gion­al play­ers must un­der­stand the fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion of the board and act ac­cord­ing­ly. "It is not that the WICB doesn't want to give the best to the play­ers. The board has fi­nan­cial prob­lems and the play­ers must act ac­cord­ing­ly and go out there and give off their best." Pres­i­dent of the West In­dies Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (Wipa) Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine was al­so on hand at the sym­po­sium and said that the board must un­der­stand that the play­ers have rights and this is all they have been fight­ing for–that their rights be re­spect­ed. Pres­i­dent of the TTCB, Az­im Bas­sarath said the sym­po­sium was a re­sound­ing suc­cess and will serve to as­sist in the up­ward move­ment of both the TTCB and the WICB.

"This sym­po­sium sur­passed our ex­pec­ta­tions, as we had catered for about 200 peo­ple but had to in­crease that al­lo­ca­tion to about 300. I think that we were able to achieve the ob­jec­tives we set out to and in the end we are very hap­py." Pri­or to the sym­po­sium Bas­sarath had men­tioned that they were hop­ing to hear from the pub­lic their ideas on how to im­prove the game both lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly. "There were some very salient points raised and some very good sug­ges­tions that came our way. We in­tend to put all the in­for­ma­tion gath­ered in­to a doc­u­ment and have it cir­cu­lat­ed to the ma­jor stake­hold­ers.

"The TTCB's ex­ec­u­tive will al­so meet and try to work out ways to im­ple­ment the sug­ges­tions that we find are good for the game here," he said. Al­so mak­ing con­tri­bu­tions at the sym­po­sium were sec­ond vice-pres­i­dent of the TTCB, Dud­nath Ramkessoon who spoke on build­ing on the board's 30-year foun­da­tion, for­mer man­ag­er of the West In­dies crick­et team Omar Khan–who spoke on cor­po­rate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and me­dia per­son­nel Vidya Ram­phal who spoke on the role of the me­dia in de­vel­op­ing West In­dies crick­et. The floor was then opened for dis­cus­sion and sug­ges­tions from the pub­lic.