Teams are bat­tling for top ho­n­ours in the bpTT-AMSF Ma­yaro Wind­ball Night Crick­et League which is in full swing with T10 games be­ing played every night at the Ma­yaro Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School Ground.

The 21-team com­pe­ti­tion bowled off on May 11 and every night’s fix­tures have pro­duced ex­cit­ing crick­et from com­mu­ni­ty ri­val­ries.

Play­ing the first league game, Dom­i­na­tors nar­row­ly held off RL­RA Des­tiny Youths in de­fend­ing their score of 65. On May 12 Ker­na­ham Su­per Kings and Roy­al Strik­ers dom­i­nate the night’s en­ter­tain­ment with unas­sail­able scores of 156 and 173 re­spec­tive­ly.

Ker­na­ham Su­per Kings were back at it on Sat­ur­day and scored a mam­moth 211 runs in ten overs, rout­ing their op­po­nents 360 Cuts for a mere 69. Ec­clesville Slug­gers al­so post­ed an im­pres­sive 153 runs on the night to fend off Back Street Boys.

It was a grand event that saw hun­dreds of spec­ta­tors turn out to wit­ness the much-an­tic­i­pat­ed re­turn of the com­pe­ti­tion which is man­aged by the All Ma­yaro Sports Foun­da­tion, and spon­sored by bp Trinidad and To­ba­go since 1999, this com­pe­ti­tion is a bench­mark sport­ing event that sees teams from across Trinidad jour­ney­ing to the pic­turesque south-east­ern com­mu­ni­ty to com­pete.

Look­ing re­splen­dent un­der the lights, 20 smart­ly uni­formed male and fe­male teams took part in the march past cer­e­mo­ny that ush­ered in the 2022 sea­son of the com­pe­ti­tion that was sus­pend­ed for the past two years due to pan­dem­ic re­stric­tions.

Tak­ing the salute and de­liv­er­ing open­ing re­marks at the launch were Dar­ron Charles, Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion and Sports Of­fi­cer II, Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment; Al­der­man Ray­mond Co­zi­er, Chair­man, Ma­yaro-Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion; and Ryan Chaitram, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and ad­vo­ca­cy man­ag­er, bpTT.

Ac­cord­ing to Charles, “The Min­istry sees sport as a ve­hi­cle for hu­man and so­cial de­vel­op­ment, and an op­por­tu­ni­ty for com­mu­ni­ty co­he­sion. Even the 2030 Agen­da for Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment iden­ti­fies sport as a key fac­tor in this glob­al ac­tion plan and recog­nis­es its con­tri­bu­tion to peace, tol­er­ance, re­spect and so­cial in­clu­sion. All these ben­e­fits and more are on full dis­play tonight in Ma­yaro. I wish every par­tic­i­pat­ing team suc­cess and we must all con­grat­u­late the AMSF and bpTT for in­vest­ing in the de­vel­op­ment of sport­ing ex­cel­lence.”

Be­fore bowl­ing the open­ing ball, bpTT’s Ryan Chaitram de­liv­ered some re­marks, “Ma­yaro has a dis­tin­guished sport­ing his­to­ry and bpTT has been proud to play a part in this over the years. Span­ning sport­ing dis­ci­plines and age groups, we’ve sup­port­ed crick­et, foot­ball, bas­ket­ball, net­ball, swim­ming and ath­let­ics in Ma­yaro through com­pe­ti­tions and oth­er de­vel­op­men­tal in­vest­ments. The work be­ing done by the All Ma­yaro Sports Foun­da­tion is trans­for­ma­tion­al and bpTT will be right here, ready to sup­port. I would urge every­one to come to Ma­yaro and en­joy this fun, ex­cit­ing and fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed at­mos­phere.”

Home­grown crick­et­ing tal­ent was al­so recog­nised at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny as the crowd cheered on na­tion­al un­der-19 fe­male crick­eters Maria La Fou­cade and Ani­aya Roberts; Zane Ma­haraj, who plays on the na­tion­al un­der-15 team; and Cur­tis Ju­nior Nanan who rep­re­sents South East in the un­der-15 di­vi­sion.

Fol­low­ing the open­ing for­mal­i­ties, the ac­tion kicked off with the round-robin com­pe­ti­tion that saw teams com­pete against each oth­er in an in­tense two-over per in­nings for­mat. Filled with scin­til­lat­ing six­es and fan­tas­tic fours, 15 teams took to the field of bat­tle to en­thral the spec­ta­tors.

Con­tin­u­ing in­to the ear­ly hours of Moth­er’s Day, the fi­nal saw More Fire­blast some late bound­aries to over­take a chal­leng­ing 27 runs post­ed by JFK. It was a six off the last ball that fired the bril­liant San­gre Grande team to vic­to­ry in the round-robin com­pe­ti­tion.

More Fire’s cap­tain, Ja­son Jadoo said, “This is my first ex­pe­ri­ence in this com­pe­ti­tion and the on­ly word I can find to de­scribe it is ‘ex­cep­tion­al’. The en­er­gy is sky high and the en­vi­ron­ment is per­fect for crick­et - there’s noth­ing like this any­where else. We are look­ing for­ward to scor­ing plen­ty of runs and rack­ing up vic­to­ries. Ku­dos to the AMSF and bpTT for this top-class com­pe­ti­tion and every­one should ex­pe­ri­ence the ex­cite­ment.”

The league ac­tion con­tin­ues this week and up­on com­ple­tion, it will dove­tail in­to the ex­cit­ing knock-out seg­ment, which will con­clude with an ex­cit­ing clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny at the Ma­yaro Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School Ground.