Pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion (TCA) Ker­win John says that the sport will nev­er be the same again af­ter the host­ing of the first T20 fran­chise tour­na­ment on the is­land from Ju­ly 24-31.

John, speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports, shared that over the past few years he and his ex­ec­u­tive has been build­ing to get to this point and from here, there will be no turn­ing back.

"We have worked very hard over the past few years to take To­ba­go crick­et for­ward and I am very hap­py that we have reached a point where our crick­et will be show­cased for the world to see."

The Chief Sec­re­tary Bago T10 Blast was the idea of John and his ex­ec­u­tive and they ap­proached the Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) An­cil Den­nis to make it a re­al­i­ty.

"We are over­joyed by the fact that the Chief Sec­re­tary is go­ing to make this hap­pen for us. He, be­ing a for­mer crick­eter, bought in­to the idea of us host­ing this tour­na­ment be­cause of the tremen­dous val­ue it brings on and off the field.

"First­ly, our crick­eters will get a chance to be seen all over the world, ply­ing their trade. We have some very tal­ent­ed crick­eters in To­ba­go but they need ex­po­sure. Some of our top crick­eters go to Trinidad to bet­ter their game but all can't go. Here is an op­por­tu­ni­ty now for those crick­et clubs even in Trinidad to see the tal­ent and take our play­ers in­to their fold for fur­ther de­vel­op­ment."

John him­self a tal­ent­ed bats­man played in Trinidad years ago for Cen­tral Sports and al­so Mayo Val­ley Boys.

"The sec­ond ben­e­fit we will have is to con­tin­ue to sell the Is­land as a tourist des­ti­na­tion. Crick­et is a per­fect tool to use to sell the coun­try in terms of what we have on of­fer and here comes that op­por­tu­ni­ty now.

"Third­ly, this tour­na­ment will cre­ate some much-need­ed em­ploy­ment with all those los­ing out be­cause of the Covid 19. So it is a win-win sit­u­a­tion here and we hope that the tour­na­ment is here to stay.

"An­oth­er ben­e­fit if stag­ing this tour­na­ment is al­low­ing our youths in To­ba­go to see our best tal­ent right in their back­yards and hope­ful­ly this will serve as an at­trac­tion that will see them pick­ing up the sport and giv­ing us a big­ger catch­ment area to choose crick­eters from in the fu­ture.

The names of the four fran­chis­es are Fort King George Gun­ners, Buc­coo Reef Divers, Rain­for­est Rangers, and Lit­tle To­ba­go Is­landers. The win­ners will walk away with $20,000.

There will al­so be an All Star game pri­or to the fi­nal. The team se­lect­ed for this game by Den­nis in­cludes the TKR stars Ke­iron Pol­lard, Dwayne Bra­vo, and Dar­ren Bra­vo, as well as West In­dies play­er Nico­las Pooran.

Manohar calls on youths to grab op­por­tu­ni­ties

For­mer min­is­ter of Sport Manohar Ram­saran has called on young crick­eters tak­ing part in the Munroe Road Sports Club train­ing camp to make full use of the op­por­tu­ni­ties af­ford­ed them.

Ram­saran, who is the pres­i­dent of the club, made the re­marks at the open­ing of the club's an­nu­al crick­et clin­ic for young crick­eters on Wednes­day.

"You guys are get­ting a unique op­por­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther your ca­reers and de­vel­op your skills. You all are very tal­ent­ed crick­eters and hence the club has tak­en a de­ci­sion to as­sist you fur­ther by host­ing this clin­ic.

"We at Munroe Road Crick­et Club be­lieves in the holis­tic de­vel­op­ment of the per­son and hence dur­ing this camp, you will be ex­posed to not on­ly crick­et coach­ing but al­so de­vel­op­ment off the field. We will have ex­perts in many dif­fer­ent fields com­ing here to chat with you guys.

"We want to make sure that when you leave this camp, you leave as not on­ly a bet­ter crick­eter but a bet­ter hu­man be­ing and cit­i­zen of T&T."

Bring­ing greet­ings from the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) was for­mer Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms Am­mar Sama­roo who un­der­lined the points made by Ram­saran and added that dis­ci­pline must be an es­sen­tial in­gre­di­ent for the crick­eters to be suc­cess­ful.

The club has re­strict­ed the num­ber of stu­dents at the clin­ic this year to 22 be­cause of the COVID-19 re­stric­tions.