The T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) launched a se­ries of North/South Clas­sic match­es in four age groups to be played in April May and June and spon­sored by The Price Club, at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre (NCC) in Bal­main, Cou­va on Wednes­day.

The of­fi­cial an­nounce­ment was made by Az­im Bas­sarath, pres­i­dent of the TTCB for young play­ers in the Un­der-13, U-15, U-17 and U-19 age groups.

Speak­ing at the Al­loy Lequay Ad­min­is­tra­tion Cen­tre, Bas­sarath re­called the glo­ry days of the North/South Clas­sic which every as­pir­ing na­tion­al crick­eter looked for­ward to hav­ing with a long­ing on­ly sur­passed by ex­pec­tant fans.

He said that the younger play­ers who can­not re­call those days will now get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to etch their name in his­to­ry through their per­for­mances in the clas­sics in the key four age groups.

He said that the launch of the North/South Clas­sics en­ables the TTCB to move in­to a high­er gear with its de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes fol­low­ing the re­cent lift­ing of COVID-19 pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions which now al­lows for team sports af­ter more than two years.

First up in the North/South Clas­sic se­ries of match­es will be the U-15s on Sat­ur­day at NCC.

Bas­sarath said the teams were picked based on their per­for­mances in the re­cent Sco­tia­bank U-15 In­ter-Zone tour­na­ment and the crick­eters will be aim­ing to catch the eyes of the na­tion­al se­lec­tors to play in the Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) Re­gion­al Tour­na­ment from Au­gust 17-28 in Grena­da.

“The lo­cal lads are the de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons in this age group hav­ing won when the tour­na­ment was last staged in 2019 in An­tigua & Bar­bu­da and will be hop­ing to main­tain their grip on the sil­ver­ware,” Bas­sarath said.

Al­so at the me­dia con­fer­ence was the mar­ket­ing man­ag­er of The Price Club, Ja­son Ri­az Ab­dool who said the spon­sors were ex­cit­ed at the op­por­tu­ni­ty to once more play the role of re­spon­si­ble cor­po­rate cit­i­zens by in­vest­ing in the de­vel­op­ment of the na­tion’s young peo­ple.

Ab­dool, ac­com­pa­nied by oth­er of­fi­cials of The Price Club is a for­mer school crick­eter and he said quite apart from crick­et de­vel­op­ing healthy bod­ies, the sport of­fers hope for many as their grap­ple with se­ri­ous is­sues off the field.

He pledged the sup­port of the com­pa­ny he rep­re­sents to part­ner with the TTCB in their thrust to use crick­et as a ve­hi­cle for na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment and pro­duce cit­i­zens who are men­tal­ly strong and be­come role mod­els and lead­ers of their com­mu­ni­ties.

Bas­sarath said fol­low­ing the re­cent con­clu­sion of the U-13, U-15 and U-19 In­ter-Zone tour­na­ments, the U-17 tour­na­ment is at the se­mi-fi­nal stage which re­flects the fo­cus of the TTCB to get the most valu­able youth crick­et re­sources back in­to gear in the short­est space of time.

He said crick­et now oc­cu­pies a spe­cial place post-pan­dem­ic as the on­ly lo­cal sport which has suc­cess­ful­ly hit the ground run­ning in a smooth, or­gan­ised man­ner that has earned the plau­dits and recog­ni­tion with crick­et ad­min­is­tra­tors around the Caribbean.

“As I said be­fore the re­gion­al gov­ern­ing body the CWI has had no hes­i­ta­tion in plac­ing their trust and con­fi­dence in sched­ul­ing its ma­jor four-day com­pe­ti­tion in Trinidad, al­beit in two phas­es to fa­cil­i­tate the Eng­land white-ball and red-ball tour of the Caribbean,” he said.

“We the TTCB are im­mense­ly proud of the strides we have made and we owe a debt of grat­i­tude to our loy­al part­ners The Price Club Su­per­mar­ket for their vote of con­fi­dence in ex­treme­ly chal­leng­ing times. We must al­so place on record the work of our coach­es, teach­ers, par­ents and staff at the Al­loy Lequay Ad­min­is­tra­tion Cen­tre who have not shunned their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and re­spond­ed at every turn,” Bas­sarath said.