Twins Anisa, Alisa want to play for WI together

ANISA MOHAMMED, 14, of Maraj Hill, Upper Cumuto, Sangre Grande, who attends the Matura High School, as a Form 4 student, is now a member of the West Indies women’s team. She will be off to Holland for a qualifying series prior to the World Tournament later this year. She was drafted into the team when Clea Hoyte of St Vincent was injured and pronounced unfit for the tour.

Mohammed impressed at the West Indies Women Cricket Tournament at which Trinidad and Tobago won  at both the knockout and league titles in Grenada. An off-break bowler who was attracted to cricket together with her twin sister Alisa, whom she felt “is equally as good as she, and is destined to make the national team sometime in the future.” Mohammed was asked to speak at the formal launch of the 2003-2004 PowerGen Coaching Programme at the Sir Frank Worrel Cricket Development Centre, Balmain, Couva, yesterday morning, when she paid tribute to PowerGen for their initiative in organising the Coaching Scheme for Youths throughout the country.

Mohammed promised when she and sister Alisa are in the national team together, “we will perform as well as the Waugh brothers of Australia.” When they were growing up they were so attracted to cricket that “we wished that we could have been playing at a higher level,” she said. By a stroke of luck they heard of the PowerGen Coaching Scheme and they were taken by their father to the North Eastern College for exposure and through the efforts of coach David Moffet “we were well trained in all the skills of the game. “It was there that I learnt the art of off-spin bowling for which I have been picked on the West Indies team,” Anisa said.

“I do not want to forget my parents who have always stood with us.  I wish to thank them with all the love in my heart for the tremendous financial assistance, and commitment to ensure our success in the game which at the beginning seemed just a sport but which has now opened up new opportunities and new horizons in our very young lives,” Anisa said. She is now involved in the PowerGen Coaching Scheme for the past 18  months, “ and suddenly I have been given celebrity status for my success so far. “This programme has not only given me physical skills which may help me to reach great heights, but it has offered me the opportunity to develop the proper attitudes and values as a teenager in this hostile world,” she added. Anisa said, “As a young woman coming out of the PowerGen Youth  Coaching Programme, I feel more confident to face the numerous challenges that will confront me and also I feel a growing inspiration to strive for excellence both on and off the field.”