The Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board (TTCB) Crick­et Acad­e­my cur­rent­ly in full swing at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre (NCC) in Cou­va, is mov­ing along nice­ly and ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cials at the cen­tre, the play­ers are ben­e­fit­ing tremen­dous­ly. There are 17 in­ductees se­lect­ed to go through an elite ten-week train­ing pro­gramme, which will cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly $500,000. The par­tic­i­pants in­clude na­tion­al Un­der-19 cap­tain Yan­nick Ot­t­ley and his West In­dies Un­der-19 team­mates Yan­nic Cari­ah and Evin Lewis. Some of the old­er in­ductees are Ker­von Christ­mas, Daniel St Clair, who re­cent­ly made his se­nior team de­but in a Twen­ty20 prac­tice match against Guyana, and Pow­er­Gen Sports Club open­er Nicholas Sookdeosingh.

Acad­e­my ad­min­is­tra­tor, the high­ly re­gard­ed Ku­mar Ram­path said at the halfway stage, the play­ers are way ahead of what was ex­pect­ed. He said: "The guys are re­al­ly do­ing very well at this year's Acad­e­my. We are halfway through and they have gained so much from the stint so far. They are very en­thu­si­as­tic, very fo­cussed and you get a feel­ing that this bunch knows ex­act­ly what they would like to achieve." Ram­path said the Acad­e­my ini­tia­tive by the board was a bril­liant idea and he con­grat­u­lat­ed the present ex­ec­u­tive for con­tin­u­ing the pro­gramme. "I was in­volved in the first pro­gramme a cou­ple of years ago and I thought that it was a fan­tas­tic idea. The last ad­min­is­tra­tion stopped the pro­gramme and I thought this was ab­surd. I must say con­grat­u­la­tions to Az­im Bas­sarath and his ex­ec­u­tive for see­ing the val­ue in this acad­e­my and bring­ing in back.

"The ini­tial bunch of play­ers we had at the first acad­e­my, al­most every­one went on to play for Trinidad and even the West In­dies. We are work­ing very hard with the play­ers and they have shown that ap­petite for work which is es­sen­tial to suc­cess." The TTCB has brought in for­mer West In­dies bat­ting leg­end Gor­don Greenidge to work with the play­ers and he has made a great im­pact ac­cord­ing to Ram­pat. "The guys have been re­al­ly ex­cit­ed about the pres­ence of Gor­don Greenidge here and he has done great work. The oth­er coach­es like David Williams, Kelvin Williams and An­tho­ny Gray have al­so done good work with the guys and when you see the boys play, you see im­prove­ment in their game.