Phillip Watts, Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, host­ed a cour­tesy call with Pe­te Rus­sell, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) of the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL), to strength­en ties to help ad­vance crick­et and youth de­vel­op­ment across T&T and the wider West In­dies.

Al­so, in at­ten­dance were Ja­son Williams, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) of the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT), and Col­in Bor­de, man­ag­er of the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR), re­flect­ing a uni­fied ap­proach across gov­ern­ment, league, and fran­chise stake­hold­ers.

Talks cen­tred on the tour­na­ment’s role in reignit­ing pas­sion for West In­dies crick­et, ac­cel­er­at­ing re­gion­al play­er de­vel­op­ment, and cre­at­ing durable path­ways for youth through joint pro­grammes with the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs. Rus­sell re­it­er­at­ed his vi­sion to lever­age the CPL’s plat­form to up­lift West In­dies crick­et, while Min­is­ter Watts out­lined plans to align sport tourism and grass­roots-to-acad­e­my crick­et de­vel­op­ment for long-term im­pact.

Min­is­ter Watts em­pha­sised a fast-tracked sport tourism agen­da along­side in­te­grat­ed youth de­vel­op­ment, “from school straight up to acad­e­my stage”, to pro­duce mea­sur­able per­for­mance out­comes and broad­en op­por­tu­ni­ties for emerg­ing tal­ent. "This ap­proach com­ple­ments on­go­ing na­tion­al ef­forts to con­vert mar­quee events in­to sus­tain­able ben­e­fits for lo­cal ath­letes, coach­es, and com­mu­ni­ties.”

The en­gage­ment co­in­cides with the T&T leg of the CPL sea­son, as the TKR con­tin­ue their home stand at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba, San Fer­nan­do.