I nor­mal­ly look for­ward to my week­ends, as once there is sport­ing ac­tion of any kind, I tend to sit as a couch pota­to and take in all the var­i­ous types of sport­ing ac­tion. Sun­day was no dif­fer­ent and was metic­u­lous­ly planned, as there were five Eng­lish Pre­mier League games, the first one start­ing at 7 am, a bit ear­ly for a Sun­day to watch foot­ball, but the sea­son on­ly has one more week to go af­ter this week­end, so I fig­ured it’s al­most like “las lap”; there­fore, en­joy the last cou­ple of weeks.

Then there was the Ital­ian Open fi­nal in ten­nis be­tween the Spaniard, my favourite, Car­los Al­caraz, and the home­town favourite, the Ital­ian Jan­nik Sin­ner. Some­where in be­tween the foot­ball, I had to see the fi­nal, and Al­caraz did not dis­ap­point as he ham­mered the world num­ber one, Sin­ner, 7-6, 6-1 in two sets.

My dear read­ers, I know what you’re think­ing: “Who cares what Col­in did on his Sun­day?” And you’d be right, usu­al­ly. But this par­tic­u­lar Sun­day, my serene sport­ing bub­ble was burst, first by What­sApp mes­sages, then by an ac­tu­al phone call, all ask­ing the same ques­tion: “‘Where are the au­dits?” To be hon­est, I shook my head as if noth­ing sur­pris­es me any­more with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board (TTCB). For the last 15 years, the TTCB has per­fect­ed the art of the un­sur­pris­ing dis­ap­point­ment. Noth­ing they do rais­es an eye­brow any­more; it’s prac­ti­cal­ly a na­tion­al pas­time.

Yes, for 15 long years, the TTCB has been main­ly re­spon­si­ble for turn­ing T&T’s once-vi­brant crick­et in­to a his­tor­i­cal foot­note. They will point to the suc­cess at the T20 or Su­per 50 lev­el, but let’s be re­al—those wins had about as much to do with the ad­min­is­tra­tors as my Sa­van­nah runs do with win­ning an Olympic gold. And I’m not afraid to be bi­ased here, be­cause frankly, I don’t care. The gold­en era of T&T crick­et, from 2005 to 2009, saw T&T win­ning the 4-day ti­tle, dom­i­nat­ing the Stan­ford T20 and 50-over for­mats, and even mak­ing it to the Cham­pi­ons League fi­nal in In­dia, fin­ish­ing as run­ners-up to New South Wales. That’s when T&T’s T20 stars burst on­to the glob­al stage, an­nounc­ing them­selves to the world, prov­ing the goods were there.

Let me there­fore give our younger read­ers a lit­tle bit of his­to­ry. I got in­volved in a group called the Friends of Crick­et as we felt the Al­loy Lequay (for­mer TTCB Pres­i­dent) era had end­ed, and the lead­er­ship of the TTCB was on a down­ward slide, even though Lequay still tried to pull strings from the shad­ows as to who should be the Pres­i­dent, 1st Vice Pres­i­dent, etc. We thought we had to save our beloved game. Thank­ful­ly, the sup­port from the fra­ter­ni­ty was over­whelm­ing; even Az­im Bas­sarath broke away from the clutch­es of Lequay and joined the Friends of Crick­et, much to the dis­plea­sure of his men­tor. Let me make it clear, how­ev­er, Al­loy Lequay was an ex­cel­lent ad­min­is­tra­tor. I did not al­ways see eye to eye with him, but he did a lot for T&T’s crick­et and ta­ble ten­nis de­vel­op­ment.

The board at the time was like a dream team of crick­et ad­min­is­tra­tors, com­pris­ing some of the finest per­son­nel in the coun­try. The nom­i­nat­ed mem­bers were Dr Claude Den­bow SC, El­ton Prescott SC, Franklyn Dol­ly (who owned his own coun­selling firm), Ger­ard Pinard (an HR man­ag­er with An­gos­tu­ra), Dyanand Bir­ju of BWIA, and me. The first vice pres­i­dent was Bas­sarath, and the sec­ond vice pres­i­dent was the chair­man of the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Leo Dood­nath. A for­mi­da­ble line­up! The CEO was Forbes Per­saud, a re­tired school teacher, and many oth­er good board mem­bers, too nu­mer­ous to men­tion, but un­for­tu­nate­ly, as my moth­er would say, “One rot­ten egg can spoil the whole batch.” A hand­ful of in­di­vid­u­als, whom I’d ini­tial­ly pegged as de­cent folk, turned out to be self-seek­ing op­por­tunists, car­ing more about their po­si­tions than the game it­self.

In 2009, Bas­sarath want­ed to be­come pres­i­dent, and in his own words at a wel­com­ing func­tion to greet a vic­to­ri­ous T&T team when the pres­i­dent and the CEO were ab­sent on crick­et busi­ness, he said, “I am hap­py to wel­come you, as the pres­i­dent and the CEO are al­ways in the lime­light, and it is my turn now.” Sub­tle, much? I should have re­alised then that some­thing fishy was go­ing on. Bas­sarath, clear­ly tired of be­ing out of the lime­light, formed his own splin­ter group, the Move­ment for Change. They won the elec­tion by a few votes, which prompt­ed Dr Claude Ben­bow SC to walk out of the AGM, mut­ter­ing some­thing about “un­scrupu­lous in­di­vid­u­als”. Per­for­mance did not mat­ter; what mat­tered was per­son­al gain and po­si­tions held by cer­tain peo­ple. As far as I was con­cerned, that day marked the bur­ial of T&T crick­et, nev­er to rise again un­til a true leader emerges from the ash­es, some­where, some­how.

His­to­ry, as they say, is writ­ten by the vic­tors. And in this case, his­to­ry will show how T&T’s crick­et has de­te­ri­o­rat­ed since 2009. Don’t be fooled by the oc­ca­sion­al tro­phy or the play­ers who make it to the re­gion­al squad. That is due to our clubs and their de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes, ab­solute­ly noth­ing to do with the TTCB’s ad­min­is­tra­tive bril­liance. T&T is yet to win the Re­gion­al 4-day tour­na­ment in the 15 years of this ad­min­is­tra­tion, hav­ing last won that tour­na­ment in 2006, dur­ing the glo­ry days. Dur­ing the glo­ry days, the Friends of Crick­et ad­min­is­tra­tion won the award for best-run sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion 3 times in 4 years, while the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion has not won it once in 15 years. All the de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes in­tro­duced by the Friends of Crick­et, such as coach­ing pro­grammes, the U-10 Pri­ma­ry Schools pro­gramme, and um­pire cours­es, just to name a few, have all been dis­con­tin­ued with no al­ter­na­tive pro­grammes pro­vid­ed.

So, why am I telling you all this? Be­cause the in­di­vid­ual who called me in­sist­ed I write about the board and “all that is go­ing on”. But hon­est­ly, what’s the point? It feels like scream­ing in­to a hur­ri­cane. Still, I have to give a mas­sive shout-out and con­grat­u­late Joshua Seemu­n­gal of the Guardian for his fan­tas­tic in­ves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism to ex­pose what is re­al­ly go­ing on with the TTCB. His find­ings, ex­pos­ing the in­ner work­ings of the TTCB, are noth­ing short of hero­ic.

I’m stand­ing here, metaphor­i­cal­ly on the bound­ary line, watch­ing this farce un­fold. Quite frankly, it is for the board mem­bers to stand up and say enough is enough and start a move­ment for change num­ber two. Think about the fu­ture of crick­et and our young peo­ple; they need help and en­cour­age­ment to move for­ward. Stop be­ing self­ish and think­ing of what one can get out of the game. It is time for change; how­ev­er, the TTCB has put a gag on its mem­bers. Can you be­lieve a mem­ber can­not take the board to court? I thought it was your con­sti­tu­tion­al right to take some­one or an or­gan­i­sa­tion to court, but the high and mighty TTCB says no one can speak ex­cept the Pres­i­dent.

Please help sal­vage and save crick­et in Trinidad & To­ba­go. Take a page out of T&T’s vot­ing pop­u­la­tion; they stood up af­ter 9.5 years and said, “It’s time for change!” And when that change hap­pens in T&T crick­et, you too can say, “When T&T’s crick­et wins, every­body wins.” Let the winds of change blow hard in the cor­ri­dors of T&T crick­et, clean out the dust, and re­store crick­et to its for­mer glo­ry.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er. ‘