Vin­ode Mam­chan

The T&T Crick­et Board (T&TCB) is in the fi­nal stages of prepar­ing a bid pack­age to be sent to the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB), as they seek to be­come hosts of the re­gion­al T20 crick­et se­ries in Jan­u­ary next year. This is the first time that coun­tries in the Caribbean have been asked to bid for match­es. The WICB has im­ple­ment­ed this sys­tem af­ter it was suc­cess­ful­ly used for the 2007 Crick­et World Cup and the 2009 T20 World Cup in the re­gion. Chair­man of the in­ter­na­tion­al match­es com­mit­tee Patrick Ram­per­sad told the Guardian yes­ter­day that the board is seek­ing gov­ern­ment's sup­port in the ven­ture, as they bid to bring ex­cit­ing crick­et to the fans in T&T.

"One of the con­di­tions con­tained in the bid doc­u­ment that is es­sen­tial, is the fact that the ter­ri­to­ries that are bid­ding must have the back­ing of its re­spec­tive gov­ern­ment." The dead­line for sub­mit­ting bid books is No­vem­ber 8. Ram­per­sad said the T&TCB is con­fi­dent that they can win the bid and host the match­es here. "We have two things work­ing in our favour at the mo­ment. The first thing is that we had won­der­ful crowds com­ing out to the 2010 event in T&T and the sec­ond is that the or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee we have is very ca­pa­ble. In fact I think we have the best or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee in the Caribbean. Ram­per­sad con­tin­ued: "We were able to stage a suc­cess­ful tour­na­ment this year and al­so staged a Test match that was brought from Ja­maica at the last mo­ment and of­fi­cials of the WICB was high in praise of the T&TCB.