Vin­ode Mam­chan

In light of the Min­is­ter of Sport, Anil Roberts re­quest­ing that of­fi­cials of the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) re­move T&T from the Red Steel name, Damien O'Dono­hoe, the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) of the CPL has re­spond­ed by say­ing that the Red Steel fran­chise is not based in T&T.

Roberts wrote to O'Dono­hoe on Tues­day and asked him to make a pub­lic state­ment on whether or not the CPL had agreed to drop T&T from the name. Roberts said that a while now CPL had agreed but yet the name was still be­ing bandied around.

O'Dono­hoe re­spond­ed by stat­ing: "CPL can con­firm that it has agreed to omit the words 'T&T' from the Red Steel team name based on a re­quest from the Min­is­ter of Sport due to his view that the use of the coun­try name 'in­fringes' on the pro­to­cols sur­round­ing the use of the name and the sov­er­eign­ty of the na­tion.

"CPL would like to take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­it­er­ate that the Red Steel team is not a fran­chise that is based in T&T. It is a team se­lect­ed from the fan­tas­tic tal­ent pool across the coun­try. The team is not re­strict­ed to play its home games in T&T, and ul­ti­mate­ly, any de­ci­sion on where the team is based is de­pen­dent on the com­mit­ment and sup­port that CPL has al­ready en­joyed with oth­er Gov­ern­ments and own­ers.

"The fans in T&T are sec­ond to none. They were fan­tas­tic sup­port­ers of CPL dur­ing its first year, and we look for­ward to bring­ing more games to T&T, no mat­ter where the fran­chise is based."

In­for­ma­tion reach­ing the T&T Guardian was that the three match­es sched­uled for lat­er this month in Trinidad will re­main at the Queen's Park Oval, Port-of-Spain.

A source close to the sit­u­a­tion said that there is no truth to the fact that the match­es were go­ing to be moved to St Kitts, where the fi­nals week­end will be played.