On Tues­day on is­ports, news broke that the promised Olympic Games 2028 de­cider se­ries for the Caribbean will be held in Trinidad and To­ba­go from April 18 to May 11 at two venues, the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba and Queens Park Oval in Port-of-Spain.

With that in mind, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board (TTCB), un­der the lead­er­ship of Pres­i­dent Az­im Bas­sarath, has a sim­ple de­ci­sion, which is to en­sure Trinidad and To­ba­go has a crick­et team in the Olympic Games in 2028.

In that re­gard, the re­gion should be rep­re­sent­ed by the best team, and it mat­ters not who will be around in 2028 but rather who is avail­able now.

So, I am mak­ing the fol­low­ing rec­om­men­da­tions to the TTCB to get its house in or­der in terms of team se­lec­tion and not be weighed down by the in­se­cu­ri­ty and pet­ty be­hav­iour that clear­ly pre­vails in the cur­rent na­tion­al team se­lec­tion pol­i­cy.

We need to pick our best play­ers and not who you like, or who is mak­ing too much mon­ey, or who talks too much, or who is not your friend.

The re­al­i­ty is that over the last 10-15 years, the best T20 play­ers from the re­gion have come from this twin-is­land re­pub­lic, as ev­i­denced by their per­for­mances in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and al­so on sev­er­al glob­al T20 stages.

So first of all, we do not have the egre­gious view by one or an­oth­er of a per­son’s age be­ing a fac­tor in se­lec­tion, and in T20 that may ac­tu­al­ly be an ad­van­tage in terms of wis­dom and clar­i­ty.

First, though, the dates of the In­di­an Pre­mier League (IPL) need to be stat­ed (March 14th to May 25th), and there­fore, there is a strong pos­si­bil­i­ty that Nicholas Pooran may not be avail­able. This needs to be ad­dressed and sort­ed out quick­ly, as he must be an in­te­gral part of any T&T team. I am cer­tain that, like all lead­ing fig­ures in any sport, no mat­ter their wealth, their suc­cess, their achieve­ments, or their earn­ings, they all want to be in­volved in an Olympics.

Ex­am­ples can be found in ten­nis from No­vak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Venus Williams, and Ser­e­na Williams to bas­ket­ball play­ers Michael Jor­dan, Mag­ic John­son, Le­Bron James, and Steph Cur­ry, just to men­tion a few names.

T&T al­so needs to en­sure that Nicholas Pooran can leave the IPL once the team pro­gress­es to the quar­ter­fi­nals or semi­fi­nals. 

 Now on to my team se­lec­tion: 

1. Cap­tain of the team - Kieron Pol­lard; there is ab­solute­ly no doubt he is the best cap­tain in the re­gion and there­fore the au­to­mat­ic choice for leader; add this to the re­spect, ad­mi­ra­tion, as well as the op­po­nents fear fac­tor.

 2. Sunil Nar­ine, an ever­green and ver­sa­tile all-rounder, whose pen­e­tra­tive bowl­ing will mes­merise the re­gion’s bats­men un­til they bawl in pain and cry out for help, when you add his bat­ting prowess, T&T will start as odds-on favourite.

 3. Nicholas Pooran has al­ready been men­tioned and ac­knowl­edged as crit­i­cal, if not at the start, then near­ing the com­ple­tion of the task to qual­i­fy for Los An­ge­les. 

 4. Akeal Ho­sein—a young play­er whose boy­hood looks and charm hide a stealthy re­solve to be the best and whose open­ing spells are rat­ed the best in the world, and of course the left-han­der can bat as well.

 5. Dar­ren Bra­vo, still in many per­sons eyes, the best bats­man in the re­gion, has been un­fair­ly treat­ed by West In­dies crick­et in many dif­fer­ent cloaks, from Ja­maica to Bar­ba­dos to St. Lu­cia, but these metaphor­i­cal men are right­ful­ly not in­volved in T&T’s team se­lec­tion.

6. Evin Lewis, your neigh­bour from deep, deep South, needs to re­turn to na­tion­al du­ty and for­get every­thing else and be en­cour­aged to be part of a co­he­sive unit. Evin has shown signs he is ready to ful­fil his des­tiny. 

 7. Khary Pierre is one of the best bowlers in the re­gion, and he and Akeal will rip apart the re­gion’s bat­ting, and Khary is al­so an ex­cel­lent thinker and field­er.

 8. Ap­point­ments: Yes, ap­point the fol­low­ing coach­es and man­age­ment with the team. 

Head Coach - Dwayne Bra­vo 

Bat­ting Coach­es: Lendl Sim­mons/Im­ran Jan

Bowl­ing coach­es: Ravi Ram­paul/Re­yard Em­rit

Man­ag­er: Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine

This ef­fort by Bas­sarath would send a strong sig­nal to the crick­et world that you can put aside your dif­fer­ences, and with this brain trust above, there will be ef­fi­cien­cy in all ar­eas.

If you add to these play­ers the fol­low­ing names be­low, no­body, not an­oth­er team/coun­try on pa­per (and in re­al­i­ty), will have any chance to come close to Trinidad and To­ba­go in T20 crick­et de­spite the many an­tics of a few of the mim­ic men in these is­lands, and there are sev­er­al here in Trinidad and To­ba­go as well. 

It is some­thing the rest of the world, par­tic­u­lar­ly the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC), has caught on to in their so far suc­cess­ful at­tempts to di­vide and con­quer the re­gion through in­su­lar­i­ty words and ac­tions, which many in the re­gion ac­cept as gospel. How­ev­er, I di­gress and will dis­cuss it at an­oth­er time.

 The oth­er play­ers I would in­clude, in no par­tic­u­lar or­der, would be Ter­rence Hinds, Amir Jan­goo, Jay­den Seales, Jyd Goolie, Byran Charles, and Mark Deyal.

I have no­ticed that vet­er­ans like foot­ballers Li­onel Mes­si and Cris­tiano Ronal­do are com­pet­ing in World Cup plans for their coun­tries in 2026, so it is in vain that Bas­sarath will en­sure that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s T20 team will be at the Olympics and com­pete strong­ly for a medal.