In an ef­fort to up­grade the skills of lo­cal cu­ra­tors, the T&T Crick­et Board re­cent­ly con­duct­ed a course for sev­er­al grounds­men through­out the coun­try.

The suc­cess­ful par­tic­i­pants were re­ward­ed with cer­tifi­cates and have ex­pressed plea­sure with get­ting the op­por­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther en­hance their ca­pa­bil­i­ties in this im­por­tant el­e­ment of the game of crick­et.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Allen Sam­my, first vice-pres­i­dent of the T&TCB, the cu­ra­tors com­prise the third part of a three-pronged re­form of the game cur­rent­ly be­ing un­der­tak­en by the Az­im Bas­sarath led ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Dr Sam­my, one of the found­ing fa­thers of the T&TCB, said youth de­vel­op­ment tops the list of ini­tia­tives and re­ferred to the most re­cent crop of in­ductees in the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) spon­sored youth acad­e­my who he said "still play for emo­tion rather than eco­nom­ics."

The for­mer T&T di­rec­tor on the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) said the sec­ond part of the re­form pack­age has to do with the two-day game which the T&TCB has rein­tro­duced at the na­tion­al lev­el when it was recog­nised that there was a re­gion­al-wide prob­lem af­fect­ing bat­ters who were not spend­ing enough time in the mid­dle.

And the third el­e­ment of the rev­o­lu­tion­ary changes in lo­cal crick­et has to do with the up­grade and re­fresh­ing of the skills of the lo­cal cu­ra­tors tasked with prepar­ing pitch­es which have been de­te­ri­o­rat­ing bad­ly over the years.

"We there­fore need to fo­cus on im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty of our pitch­es and we have some good peo­ple, qual­i­fied and en­thu­si­as­tic about lend­ing their ex­per­tise to im­prove the stan­dards in this spe­cialised field," said Dr Sam­my.

Among those who have played a great role in ed­u­cat­ing and im­prov­ing the cu­ra­tors are Shak­er Mano, now the se­nior cu­ra­tor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT); "Tri­ni" Per­sad, who act­ed as his as­sis­tant; Jim­my Man­bodh, wide­ly re­gard­ed as a vet­er­an, and oth­er T&TCB staff who he said were ad­mirably man­aged by Dud­nath Ramkessoon, Chief Op­er­a­tions Of­fi­cer of the T&TCB, and Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Su­ruj Ra­goonath.

The suc­cess­ful cu­ra­tors were: Bhan Ram­per­sad, Kil­ick­darie Pul­chan and Dex­ter Nolan of the NCC; Dav­en­dra Singh, Dhan­raj Ram­roop, Ish­war Ram­nath, Lak­sh­man Lochan, Nizamod­een Mo­hammed, Nazeer Habib, Ram­dath Sankar; Re­my Man­bodh de­scribed as a "tu­tor," Ronald Pe­ters, and Ron­nie Lochan.

Dr Sam­my said the cu­ra­tors will go back and make an ef­fort to im­prove the qual­i­ty of their pitch­es.

Among those who will ben­e­fit are Bam­boo Sports, Vic­to­ria Sports, Mon­roe Road, Unique Sports Club, Pris­ons, Mer­ry Boys, Preysal, Moo­sai's and three rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre at Bal­main in Cou­va.