Alvin Corneal

Is it true or false? Or am I just tak­ing re­al­i­ty out of con­text? The most re­cent de­ci­sions of the WICB demon­strat­ed that T&T was not giv­en a sin­gle match for the ICC World Twen­ty20. Hav­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed the rea­son for this omis­sion, I was told that ap­proval for match­es to be played here need­ed en­dorse­ment from the Gov­ern­ment. For what­ev­er rea­son, this en­dorse­ment was not forth­com­ing and it was no fault of the or­gan­is­ers that sup­port­ers of the sport were not al­lowed to wit­ness any of the match­es. My ini­tial thoughts on this de­ci­sion sent me back to some six months ago when our na­tion­al crick­et team took the world by ab­solute sur­prise by reach­ing the fi­nal of the Cham­pi­ons League Twen­ty20 in In­dia.

A look again re­mind­ed me of the 2008 Stan­ford 20/20 Tour­na­ment which saw T&T romp home as win­ners while bring­ing a new lev­el of joy to the one mil­lion plus fans in the coun­try. Then I start­ed com­par­ing the venues of the re­gion which are avail­able, the his­to­ry of crowd par­tic­i­pa­tion, the sales of tick­ets at every venue and the most ad­e­quate fa­cil­i­ties for such match­es. Again, I came up with an­swers which would place us equal on­ly to Kens­ing­ton Oval in Bar­ba­dos for events of this mag­ni­tude. And just as I was about to set­tle for this faux pas cre­at­ed by the pow­ers that be re­gard­ing the de­ci­sions to de­prive us from be­ing part of the host­ing process, I am hit by an­oth­er blow which al­so af­fects the crick­et fans and the many per­sons and busi­ness­es, all of whom will be in­con­ve­nienced in some way.

We will no longer have the two match­es which were pre­vi­ous­ly of­fered to this coun­try on May 23 and 25. South Africa was sched­uled to play these match­es as part of their tour of the Caribbean, which would have brought our tal­ly up to just four play­ing days of in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et for the year 2010. Our in­ter­nal elec­tions were placed right in the mid­dle of these two days, no doubt cast­ing a lev­el of un­cer­tain­ty as re­gards the safe­ty of the play­ers on both sides dur­ing the fi­nal run of a po­lit­i­cal quag­mire that present­ly in­cludes the reck­less use of words (rid­dled with char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tions) and deroga­to­ry as­sump­tions, ca­pa­ble of bring­ing high lev­els of anger to politi­cians and their fam­i­lies, which may by ex­ten­sion, bring some ir­re­spon­si­ble re­ac­tions. The ICC and WICB are cor­rect to re­move the match­es for the safe­ty of the play­ers, al­though we, as Tri­nis, do not be­lieve that the play­ers would have been in trou­ble.

This is not a so­ci­ety which has a his­to­ry of go­ing in that di­rec­tion and who knows how many would have been hap­py to fill the Queen's Park Oval with a pic­nic bas­ket, a group of friends, a small boom box and re­lax­ing ole talk, as op­posed to hav­ing the stress of be­ing part of some po­lit­i­cal trau­ma. Maybe one day, some­one will un­der­stand the val­ue of some type of hu­man mech­a­nism which could utilise the year­ly cal­en­dar in such a way that events of na­tion­al in­ter­est can be al­lo­cat­ed dates which will be con­ve­nient for all to sup­port. Present­ly, we are al­ways faced with two and three ex­cit­ing events hap­pen­ing at the same time, which brings a re­duc­tion in crowd sup­port. Food for thought for or­gan­i­sa­tions like the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee, or even the FCB Sports Foun­da­tion, both of whom are at­tached to all sport across the coun­try.