For­mer West In­dies spin­ner Sunil Nar­ine, who an­nounced his in­ter­na­tion­al re­tire­ment from crick­et and ris­ing ta­ble ten­nis star Imani Ed­wards-Tay­lor, were the toast of the Queen’s Park Crick­et Club when it held its an­nu­al gala awards cer­e­mo­ny at the Club’s Tra­garete Road, Port-of-Spain venue on Fri­day night.

Nar­ine, re­gard­ed as one of the great­est lim­it­ed-overs bowlers and who was a part of the West In­dies team that won the 2012 T20 World Cup, was named Se­nior Sport­ing Per­son­al­i­ty of the Year, from among the fol­low­ing nom­i­nees: (Randy An­toine and Chelsea Fred­er­ick, foot­ball; Jor­dan Viera, Hock­ey; Shamar Brit­ton, Ta­ble Ten­nis and Richard Hart, Squash).

Nar­ine, 35, a mys­tery spin-bowler, was nom­i­nat­ed by the crick­et sec­tion of the club af­ter his 44 wick­ets for QPCC and that in­clud­ed four ten-wick­et hauls with un­be­liev­able fig­ures of sev­en for no runs in just one in­nings. On the back of his bowl­ing per­for­mances, QPCC con­vinc­ing­ly won the TTCB na­tion­al league ti­tle.

Nar­ine, who an­nounced his re­tire­ment on No­vem­ber 5, was con­tract­ed by six dif­fer­ent teams through­out the world in the top fran­chise T20 Tour­na­ments, in­clu­sive of the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers of the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL), the Kolkata Knight Rid­ers of the In­di­an Pre­mier League (IPL), Sur­rey in the Vi­tal­i­ty Blast (Eng­land), LA Night Rid­ers in the Ma­jor Crick­et League in the USA, and the Abu Dhabi Knight Rid­ers in the In­ter­na­tion­al League T20.

On No­vem­ber 11, Nar­ine helped T&T Red Force win the CG Unit­ed Su­per50 Cup for the 14th time af­ter a dom­i­nant sev­en-wick­et win over the Lee­ward Is­lands Hur­ri­canes in the fi­nal at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my where he took three wick­ets for 17 runs in his nine overs.

Ed­wards-Tay­lor, who won sev­er­al ta­ble ten­nis tour­na­ments had as her chal­lengers for the ho­n­our, Arie Bha­gan and Michael Chaves in foot­ball, Joshua Davis in crick­et, Seth Thong in squash and Nicholas Siu Butt in hock­ey.

In the pres­ence of guest of ho­n­our, Her Ex­cel­len­cy the Pres­i­dent of T&T, Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, QPCC cel­e­brat­ed the out­stand­ing ath­letes from its five sport­ing dis­ci­plines for their achieve­ments for the past year.

The club al­so ho­n­oured T&T Crick­et Board Pres­i­dent Az­im Bas­sarath, who was award­ed the Hum­ming­bird Medal Gold for his loy­al and de­vot­ed Ser­vice to na­tion­al crick­et, and Ken­neth Fer­gu­son, who was al­so the re­cip­i­ent of a Hum­ming­bird Medal Sil­ver.

Hon­orary Trea­sur­er Ruthven Jack pre­sent­ed a spe­cial plaque to for­mer na­tion­al hock­ey stand-out Sta­cy Siu Butt for her in­duc­tion in­to the Na­tion­al Hall of Fame.

Fea­tured speak­er, Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) Pres­i­dent Dr Kishore Shal­low recog­nised the im­por­tance of the QPCC in their con­tri­bu­tion to crick­et in both Trinidad and To­ba­go and the West In­dies.

He stat­ed, “Since the Queen’s Park Crick­et Club’s dawn in 1891, as a bea­con of hope, it has evolved in­to a hall­mark of crick­et­ing ex­cel­lence over 132 years.”

Dr Shal­low al­so touched on some of the chal­lenges hin­der­ing the West In­dies set-up, par­tic­u­lar­ly, the is­sue of fund­ing, and point­ed out, “Cur­rent­ly we are strug­gling with fi­nan­cial re­sources. We have very lim­it­ed fi­nan­cial strength.”

He said de­spite the chal­lenges fac­ing the team, he was op­ti­mistic about the fu­ture of the re­gion­al team.

He added, “From my per­spec­tive, my in­formed view, that there is ac­tu­al­ly a sil­ver lin­ing. I do sin­cere­ly be­lieve that there is a vis­i­ble light at the end of the tun­nel.”