The Ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board are pre­dict­ing an ex­cit­ing up­com­ing sea­son of ac­tiv­i­ties. The 2023 sea­son will bowl off on Wednes­day with the Na­mal­co Un­der-23 Cup.

Four teams will be in­volved in three rounds of match­es at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre (NCC) Ground in Bal­main, Cou­va; and the In­shan Ali Ground in Preysal, with the fi­nal sched­uled for Jan­u­ary 7 at the NCC.

The match­es are 50 overs per side and get go­ing at 9.30 am.

The teams will be cap­tained by four tal­ent­ed young­sters iden­ti­fied by the T&TCB se­lec­tors as hav­ing a ma­jor role to play in the fu­ture suc­cess of the na­tion­al se­nior team.

They are Joshua James (Mas­quer­aders), Cephas Coop­er (Hum­ming­birds), Matthew Patrick (Flamin­gos) and Kris­tan Kallicha­ran (Scar­let Ibis).

At the re­cent launch of the com­pe­ti­tion, the pres­i­dent of the TTCB, Az­im Bas­sarath stressed the im­por­tance of hav­ing the Un­der-23s in the na­tion­al set-up.

He de­scribed the group of crick­eters as im­mense­ly tal­ent­ed with much to of­fer and who were first en­gaged in a TTCB na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion in 2019 be­fore Covid-19 pro­hib­it­ed the sport from be­ing played for close to 24 months.

“It is an idea that the TTCB has been pro­mot­ing for some time to tap in­to the la­tent abil­i­ties of crick­eters, who for one rea­son or the oth­er, do not get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to take cen­tre stage. And we are pleased to see that at the Crick­et West In­dies lev­el at­ten­tion is al­so be­ing paid in this di­rec­tion fol­low­ing the T&TCB’s ini­tial suc­cess,” said Bas­sarath.

He was ef­fu­sive in his praise of Na­mal­co Con­struc­tion Ser­vices Lim­it­ed for again of­fer­ing to dis­play their cor­po­rate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the na­tion­al game with their $120,000 spon­sor­ship.

Nalam­co’s di­rec­tor Al­isha Ali said at the De­cem­ber 20 launch of the tour­na­ment that she is very pleased with the ef­fort of the T&TCB to pro­vide the plat­form for the young crick­eters to show­case their un­doubt­ed tal­ent.

Ali said she recog­nised that the Un­der-23s were a miss­ing age group in the na­tion­al and re­gion­al de­vel­op­ment pro­gram and Na­mal­co was hap­py to be the ti­tle spon­sor for the four-team com­pe­ti­tion.

She said she looked for­ward to some ex­cit­ing match­es and bril­liant in­di­vid­ual per­for­mances which will cer­tain­ly point the way to­wards a very suc­cess­ful T&TCB 2023 sea­son.

Al­so ex­press­ing bright op­ti­mism for the up­com­ing sea­son was the Chair­man of the T&TCB’s Mar­ket­ing Com­mit­tee, Is­mahieel Ali who al­so thanked Na­mal­co for join­ing the push to high­light the Un­der-23s.

“Af­ter the re­moval of the Covid-19 re­stric­tions, the T&TCB did not have the space in their crick­et cal­en­dar to im­ple­ment all the de­vel­op­ment pro­grams that the Mar­ket­ing Com­mit­tee is in­ter­est­ed in and work­ing on,” said Ali.

“We are ex­treme­ly pleased to be in­volved in this ex­cel­lent ini­tia­tive to fur­ther de­vel­op the young tal­ent that Trinidad and To­ba­go has in abun­dance. We look for­ward to work­ing close­ly with the TTCB Ex­ec­u­tive to en­sure we do more for our young peo­ple,” said Ali.