Persaud given top cricket job

On Thursday at a quarterly meeting of the the board at their office at Balmain, Couva, Persaud was handed the top job ahead of a slew of high profile applicants.

Among them were Member of Parliament for Chaguanas Manohar Ramsaran and Earl Best, an official of the Secondary Schools Cricket League and a teacher at Queen’s Royal College in Port-of-Spain.

The position was left vacant prior to the cricket board elections last year which placed “Friends of Cricket,” an organisation led by former West Indies and national cricketer Deryck Murray, in control of local cricket by a slim one-vote margin.

The “Friends” narrowly defeated a slate of candidates representing the incumbents who had served for many years under veteran cricket administrator Alloy Lequay.

The evergreen Lequay was the last holder of the post executing the plans of the former executive of the TTCB. Lequay has been acknowledged as the brainchild of the Sir Frank Worrell Cricket Development Centre at Balmain which is regarded as the only facility of its kind in the West Indies.

Persaud recently retired as a school teacher at the El Dorado Secondary School. He did not reach the mandatory age for retirement but exercised the option after his application for secondment to the TTCB was reportedly turned down by the Ministry of Education.

He will reportedly receive a monthly salary of $11,500 as CEO of the Cricket Board and among the perks of the new job which he assumes today is a new motor car.

It is understood that Lequay received a monthly salary of $6,000 when he functioned in the capacity of Board CEO.

Persaud will now be wearing three hats— CEO and secretary of the Cricket Board; and also president of the Secondary Schools Cricket League (SSCL).