T&T’s suc­cess­ful ju­nior crick­eters were urged to strive for the 2023 Crick­et World Cup up­on re­turn­ing from An­tigua on Sun­day night. A small but vi­brant group, most­ly in­clud­ing par­ents, grand­par­ents and sup­port­ers gath­ered at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port to wel­come home the crick­eters, who the day be­fore, won the Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) Re­gion­al Un­der-15 Cham­pi­onship.

“We went in as the un­der­dogs from our record the pre­vi­ous year, and we came out vic­to­ri­ous,” man­ag­er Kelvin Mo­hammed ex­claimed. Hav­ing fin­ished sec­ond to last in the 2018 tour­na­ment with 12.4 points, T&T won the ti­tle with 29.2 points this time around, while Guyana had 29.1 points. The lo­cal boys al­so scored dou­ble the runs they had from last year (1200-plus), got the most dis­ci­plined team in the tour­na­ment, and of the five match­es played, had four man-of-the-match awards.

Ar­joon Ram­lal, the first vice-pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board (TTCB) was at the air­port to wel­come home the play­ers. While con­grat­u­lat­ing them on a suc­cess­ful tour­na­ment, he urged them to strive to play in crick­et’s biggest show­piece event.

“This vic­to­ry comes at a time when we have a big in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et event tak­ing place in Eng­land, start­ing at the end of next month and go­ing to Ju­ly 15th - the World Cup - and all play­ers want to get in­to the World Cup. The next World Cup will be four years from now, and some of you will be 18 and 19, and we want some of you to start putting your hands up for the 2023 World Cup.” Ram­lal said.

The TTCB of­fi­cial went fur­ther in ex­plain­ing to the young crick­eters that this is on­ly the start of some­thing spe­cial in their crick­et ca­reers, and they must now work hard­er to progress through the lev­els.

He said, “Re­mem­ber the vic­to­ry is just the bonus at this age. This is de­vel­op­ment and what this whole pro­gramme is about is look­ing at you four to five years from now where your crick­et will be and what type of crick­eter you will be, so every year you play, look to im­prove on the pre­vi­ous per­for­mance.”

Bri­an Brown, who coached the team and hails from To­ba­go, said, “The boys played hard. We have two watch­words that we live by, fo­cus and in­ten­si­ty. At this age, they can sway so eas­i­ly so it was im­por­tant that we try to main­tain our fo­cus, and try to play com­pet­i­tive crick­et at all times.”

The cap­tain, An­drew Ram­baran, said, “It was not an easy tour­na­ment but all the guys put out the hard work in train­ing.”

The par­ents were al­so praised for their sup­port through­out the tour­na­ment and in the build-up to it. Mo­hammed end­ed by say­ing, “In­di­vid­u­als win a game, but a team wins a tour­na­ment.”