Guardian Me­dia's Sports Desk fea­tures for­mer West In­dies play­er Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine, a son of the Ch­agua­nas soil Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine as we con­tin­ue with our com­mu­ni­ty out­reach se­ries.

Q. If one asks who is Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine, how would you de­scribe your­self?

A. I'll an­swer by telling you a cou­ple of sto­ries which I think say more about me than I can say about my­self. I was 13 years old when my moth­er had a dis­cus­sion with me about the ef­fects of drink­ing al­co­hol and smok­ing, which was preva­lent in my com­mu­ni­ty, I sup­pose like in many oth­ers. In that con­ver­sa­tion, I gave her my word that I would nev­er smoke or drink al­co­hol. Thir­ty-one years lat­er, I have re­mained true to that word. Even at my wed­ding, I drank an Ap­ple J, the cham­pagne of soft drinks (smile).

Lat­er, at about age 18, soon af­ter I had made the na­tion­al se­nior team, I was of­fered huge sums of mon­ey to leave Ale­scon Comets by oth­er clubs. I went to my moth­er for guid­ance. Giv­en our sit­u­a­tion at home, I was ea­ger to earn my own mon­ey and I couldn’t imag­ine my moth­er not sup­port­ing this move.

I dis­tinct­ly re­mem­ber her care­ful­ly lis­ten­ing to me. Then she ex­plained that Ale­scon Comets was not just a crick­et club but an im­por­tant or­gan­i­sa­tion in the com­mu­ni­ty for sev­er­al rea­sons. She spoke about how Ale­scon, which is al­most 93 years old to­day, unit­ed the com­mu­ni­ty, bring­ing di­verse re­li­gious groups to­geth­er through the sport of crick­et. She went on to ex­plain what the club meant to our fam­i­ly, as my fa­ther (who I didn’t know very well since he died when I was on­ly six) had ded­i­cat­ed his life to the club as the club's of­fi­cial scor­er for over 30 years while my broth­ers ac­tive­ly played with the club.

The fi­nal point she em­pha­sised was the im­por­tance of re­mem­ber­ing and valu­ing those who had giv­en me op­por­tu­ni­ties and had sup­port­ed me to achieve what­ev­er suc­cess I had and would have. A few days lat­er, af­ter giv­ing it some thought, I told her that I had de­cid­ed not to play for any club oth­er than Ale­scon Comets and that I would not take any mon­ey from Ale­scon to play crick­et. I am pleased to have played for my club for al­most 20 years and while all oth­er play­ers got paid, I played with­out ac­cept­ing any monies from the club. I will for­ev­er re­mem­ber her re­sponse to my de­ci­sion: 'Good de­ci­sion and nev­er for­get where you came from'. These words still res­onate in my mind in every­thing that I do.

For those who know me, my fam­i­ly means every­thing to me, as the last of ten chil­dren, my moth­er and sib­lings pro­vid­ed me with un­con­di­tion­al love and sup­port through­out my en­tire life. My wife has not on­ly been my part­ner for the last 18 years but she has al­so been my best friend and my harsh­est crit­ic. Our three chil­dren are my con­stant joy and are al­so not shy to pro­vide un­so­licit­ed and hon­est feed­back, all of which help to keep me ground­ed. I feel very for­tu­nate to have been blessed with this type of sup­port dur­ing the high­est and low­est pe­ri­ods of my life. With­out them, I would be noth­ing.

Q. Your con­tri­bu­tion to the na­tion through sports in par­tic­u­lar is no se­cret, but what is your con­tri­bu­tion to Char­lieville and in par­tic­u­lar Ch­agua­nas?

A. My con­tri­bu­tion has been in crick­et play­ing for the Ale­scon Comets Crick­et Club, which I start­ed when I just turned 14 years in a match against the Ox­ford Crick­et Club to gain pro­mo­tion from the Cen­tral Zone to Na­tion­al League Di­vi­sion 2. This was a ma­jor achieve­ment for the club and I re­called the en­tire com­mu­ni­ty com­ing out to sup­port and what this meant to the com­mu­ni­ty of Char­lieville and by ex­ten­sion the Ch­agua­nas com­mu­ni­ty.

I was al­so the first play­er from Ch­agua­nas to play for the West In­dies. How­ev­er, my biggest con­tri­bu­tion to date to the com­mu­ni­ty is the KFC Youth Coach­ing Pro­gramme, which I con­cep­tu­alised and for which I was able to get the fund­ing fol­low­ing a dis­cus­sion with then mar­ket­ing man­ag­er Den­nis Ramdeen and for­mer CEO of Pres­tige Hold­ings Dane Dar­basie, both of whom were orig­i­nal­ly dis­cussing a per­son­al en­dorse­ment with me. How­ev­er, I want­ed the com­mu­ni­ty to ben­e­fit and was able to con­vince them to go with the KFC Pro­gramme so young per­sons in the com­mu­ni­ty would get an op­por­tu­ni­ty just as I had.

The pro­gramme was fur­ther de­vel­oped with the as­sis­tance of for­mer play­er and vice pres­i­dent of the club, Dr Mani­ram Rag­bir, Dr Dale Has­saranah (club doc­tor), the late Ra­jen­dra Ja­groop (Comets for­mer cap­tain and trea­sur­er at the time) and Er­rol Fur­longe (ed­u­ca­tor) to ad­dress two ar­eas - sports (Crick­et coach­ing and de­vel­op­ment) and ed­u­ca­tion (for chil­dren who could not af­ford or need­ed as­sis­tance with their school work). The pro­gramme changed over the years and ran for over 15 years and per­sons like Adri­an Bharath and hun­dreds more ben­e­fit­ed from it.

Q. What makes you proud to be a na­tive of Char­lieville?

A. The peo­ple of Char­lieville with­out a doubt. The com­mu­ni­ty is a close-knit­ted com­mu­ni­ty that has kept me ground­ed and has helped me sig­nif­i­cant­ly while teach­ing me many valu­able lessons along the way. I re­call when I was se­lect­ed to go to Bar­ba­dos for Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege in 1990, I was asked to con­tribute TT$300. I want­ed to go but knew there was no way I could have asked my moth­er for $300. I re­called telling the crick­et coach as an ex­cuse for not go­ing, that I get sick when I trav­el on an air­craft (I had nev­er trav­elled on an air­craft in my life). On the day that the school was sup­posed to go on the trip, the cap­tain of the team, Ken­rick Man­galie, who al­so lived in Char­lieville, of­fered to pick me up to take me to the air­port and I told him that I was not go­ing. The word quick­ly got around and mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty on the very date of the trav­el raised the mon­ey for me to go.

How­ev­er, there was an­oth­er prob­lem, I had to tell them that I didn’t have a pass­port. They were able to arrange a trav­el per­mit for me at the air­port and I was able to trav­el on that per­mit to Bar­ba­dos for the Garfield Sobers tour­na­ment, in which we reached the fi­nals. It is this type of sup­port by mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty through­out my ca­reer and even af­ter­wards, which has made me so very proud of Char­lieville.

It is for those rea­sons that I have con­tin­ued to be in­volved in the game which has giv­en me every­thing and for which I feel a sense of spir­i­tu­al oblig­a­tion to live by the words: “To whom much is giv­en, much is ex­pect­ed.”

Q. From your teenage years to now, how would you de­scribe the de­vel­op­ment of sports in Char­lieville and by ex­ten­sion Ch­agua­nas?

A. While the game of crick­et con­tin­ues to be strong in the com­mu­ni­ty be­cause the clubs like Ale­scon Comets and Cen­tral Sports, two clubs very close to each oth­er play­ing in the Na­tion­al League Di­vi­sion 1 and well over 90 years, are well struc­tured, sad­ly, the oth­er sports have not quite de­vel­oped in the way they should have for a num­ber of rea­sons, in­clud­ing lack of fa­cil­i­ties, fund­ing and prop­er man­age­ment.

Q. Who was your child­hood hero and do you still ad­mire that per­son to­day?

A. Many peo­ple have con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to my life. My moth­er was prob­a­bly the most in­flu­en­tial but out­side of my fam­i­ly and in a com­mu­ni­ty-based con­text, I ad­mired Mr Azad Abass Ali, who was the pres­i­dent of Ale­scon Comets for more than two decades and a busi­ness­man from Char­lieville. He was one of the most in­flu­en­tial per­sons in my life.

Mr Ali, a deeply re­li­gious man that fol­lowed his Mus­lim faith, was very con­sid­er­ate and re­spect­ful of every­one. He was a gen­er­ous man who would as­sist every­one with­out fan­fare or any­one know­ing. Every week, I would be called in­to his of­fice just to chat and to dis­cuss any­thing that was both­er­ing me. This was not done for me on­ly but to any­one in the com­mu­ni­ty that need­ed ad­vice or as­sis­tance. He was some­one that nev­er let the ma­te­r­i­al things that he would have ac­quired in his life pre­vent him from mop­ping the ground when rain fell, pulling cov­ers on the field and more im­por­tant­ly spend­ing a sig­nif­i­cant amount of his time at games and with the club mem­bers.

As a young per­son, see­ing a man that had every­thing but yet who was so hum­ble be with the club and the com­mu­ni­ty do­ing these things, taught me that no mat­ter what po­si­tion you oc­cu­py, what­ev­er wealth you ac­cu­mu­late, nev­er lose touch with the peo­ple around you. Mr Ali has de­part­ed but his val­ues, his prin­ci­ples, his hon­esty re­mains with me. I will nev­er for­get his love, en­cour­age­ment and his un­con­di­tion­al sup­port. For me, he played the role of the fa­ther that I didn’t have dur­ing the for­ma­tive years of my life and I am sure to many oth­ers who were in the same sit­u­a­tion as me with­in the com­mu­ni­ty. I can on­ly as­pire to be as self­less as he was to me and the com­mu­ni­ty.

Q. Sports is about com­pet­ing. Would it be fair for the pub­lic to judge you as a com­bat­ive per­son or an in­di­vid­ual who likes fair­ness and jus­tice?

A. This is a good ques­tion, I think life is about per­spec­tive and it de­pends from which side one looks at a sit­u­a­tion or an in­di­vid­ual. For ex­am­ple, when I played the game, whether it was for club, school or coun­try, I gave it my all. It’s the on­ly way I know to do it, give your all or don’t do it at all. My team­mates love that about me but the teams we played against prob­a­bly didn’t like it.

Sim­i­lar­ly, when I rep­re­sent­ed the play­ers as head of WIPA, I fought very hard for play­ers' rights and for them to be treat­ed fair­ly. From the play­ers’ per­spec­tive, that was me fight­ing for fair­ness and jus­tice, but from the WICB per­spec­tive, it might have been com­bat­ive. More re­cent­ly, I have been ad­vo­cat­ing for good gov­er­nance, trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s crick­et. For many, that is im­por­tant for the de­vel­op­ment and evo­lu­tion of the game, where­as the in­cum­bents whose per­spec­tive may be dif­fer­ent, would see my ad­vo­ca­cy as com­bat­ive.

In the fi­nal analy­sis, I be­lieve that no mat­ter what one does there are go­ing to be peo­ple who will iden­ti­fy and sup­port one’s po­si­tion and there will be those for whom the po­si­tion one takes will not be a pop­u­lar one and there­fore one has to face their crit­i­cism. This is par for the course. I can choose to sit in a meet­ing, not con­tribute, col­lect a stipend and be the most loved, but least re­spect­ed in­di­vid­ual and ac­com­plish noth­ing. But that just would not be me. My phi­los­o­phy in life is to al­ways try and do the best that one can do for pos­i­tive change and be­cause so many have helped me along the way, to con­tin­ue to push for fair­ness and jus­tice, even if at times it is to my detri­ment.

Q. Who is your all-time best West In­di­an crick­eter and why?

A. Bri­an Lara no doubt has to be the great­est play­er I have played with and in my opin­ion the great­est West In­di­an play­er. To see this ge­nius in ac­tion and to have shared a dress­ing room with him to me, I could not have asked for any­thing more. The things that Bri­an was able to ac­com­plish or do on a crick­et field was mind-bog­gling, as they de­fy the fun­da­men­tals of the game in many ways. He scored 375 and 10 years lat­er he scored 400. He scored 370-odd runs in a day and then went on to score 501. The game has changed so much but Lara would stand out in any era amongst the great­est in the world.

In fact, this point is rel­e­vant to the ques­tion above about be­ing com­bat­ive - in the first game Lara saw me play as an 18-year old in a tri­al match, I had a se­ri­ous bat­tle be­tween bat and ball with Ken Williams and it was that en­counter that re­sult­ed in Lara say­ing to the coach af­ter, 'Young Ram­nar­ine must play for T&T this sea­son. I want sol­diers, peo­ple who are not afraid to play hard against the op­po­si­tion.' He hon­est­ly be­lieved that we need­ed to change our ap­proach in the way we played from a re­laxed way to a more ag­gres­sive but fair and con­fi­dent man­ner.

Q. What would you like to see im­proved from a sport­ing as­pect in Ch­agua­nas?

A. I would hope that one day Ale­scon Comets would get the ground that was ear­marked for it since 1994, but for one rea­son or the oth­er has not been built. Al­so, I would like to see the com­mu­ni­ty main­tain the fa­cil­i­ties and not on­ly re­ly on the gov­ern­ment or the bor­ough cor­po­ra­tion to look af­ter the fa­cil­i­ties. The fa­cil­i­ties be­long to every­one and we must en­sure that we are re­spon­si­ble com­mu­ni­ty cit­i­zens and do our part for its care and up­keep. If this can be done with all pub­lic fa­cil­i­ties, then I think the coun­try would be a much bet­ter place. Be­sides, if more sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties could be built to pro­mote oth­er sports in my com­mu­ni­ty that’s some­thing I would wel­come, but I am aware that fund­ing may be an is­sue.

Q. How many sports were you ex­posed to be­fore you de­cid­ed on crick­et?

A. Dur­ing my ear­ly days, I played ta­ble ten­nis (on a ply­wood board), bad­minton in a friend's front yard, lawn ten­nis at Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege and of course foot­ball at the grounds in the com­mu­ni­ty. Grow­ing up we were very in­no­v­a­tive, be­cause the boys in the vil­lage could not have af­ford­ed prop­er equip­ment, so we made up things us­ing un­want­ed stuff. For ex­am­ple, we made bats with wood, we made ta­ble ten­nis rack­ets with ply­wood and used bi­cy­cle rub­bers for the han­dles. We were a cre­ative bunch of guys in the vil­lage and they were al­ways game to try some­thing.

Q. Do you re­gret any ma­jor de­ci­sions that you have made?

A. I have made mis­takes along the way and will con­tin­ue to make mis­takes but I’m not one to dwell in the past. My guide has al­ways been my con­science, which is shaped by the val­ues that were taught to me grow­ing up.