PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER
pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was among the coun­try’s lead­ers who praised the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers’ Hero CPL ti­tle win, say­ing their “un­beat­en run” had of­fered “great in­spi­ra­tion” to cit­i­zens.

In a mes­sage fol­low­ing TKR’s eight-wick­et win over the St Lu­cia Zouks, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “Well done TKR! Con­grat­u­la­tions to the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers on an amaz­ing, un­beat­en cam­paign which en­sured that they cap­tured their fourth Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) ti­tle to­day.”

She de­scribed the vic­to­ry as in­spi­ra­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing this pan­dem­ic pe­ri­od.

“TKR’s un­beat­en run in this year’s CPL of­fered great in­spi­ra­tion to us as cit­i­zens be­cause it demon­strat­ed the re­ward of team­work, the val­ue of nev­er giv­ing up and the courage of be­ing de­ter­mined even when the go­ing gets tough.”

She said the team had al­so giv­en the fans “more than just en­ter­tain­ment and na­tion­al pride, but they have in­stilled qual­i­ties which we all should live by in these un­cer­tain times.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so praised the var­i­ous achieve­ments of the TKR team dur­ing the tour­na­ment.

“The mas­ter­ful in­nings of 72 from skip­per Pol­lard off on­ly 28 balls against the Tri­dents to pull off an amaz­ing vic­to­ry some weeks ago, Bra­vo’s 500th T20 wick­et ear­li­er in the tour­na­ment and Lendl Sim­mons be­com­ing the lead­ing run-scor­er in CPL his­to­ry dur­ing his el­e­gant knock in the fi­nals, were all mo­ments in the tour­na­ment which ex­em­pli­fied the world-class tal­ent that hails from our na­tion and more so the dy­nam­ic unit that is the Trinidad Knight Rid­ers. As a coun­try we are al­so grate­ful for the tal­ent from oth­er na­tions which joined our fran­chise to de­liv­er vic­to­ry in this year’s tour­na­ment,” she said.

Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell al­so con­grat­u­lat­ed the team, adding that the suc­cess­ful stag­ing of the event un­der­scores T&T’s abil­i­ty to host a ma­jor sport­ing tour­na­ment even in the face of COVID-19 re­stric­tions. He con­grat­u­lat­ed the Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Min­istry of Health and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in pro­vid­ing the sup­port nec­es­sary to en­sure a smooth and safe­ly ex­e­cut­ed tour­na­ment.

He said the un­prece­dent­ed twelve-match win­ning per­for­mance of TKR, cou­pled with the suc­cess­ful stag­ing of the CPL, which was viewed by mil­lions around the globe, can on­ly au­gur well for po­si­tion­ing Des­ti­na­tion T&T at the pin­na­cle of sport tourism world­wide.