CLICO give $5M for U-15 cricket

TRINIDAD and Tobago could be the venue for the first Under-15 World Cricket Championships, possibly in 2007. The tournament could be used as a dry-run for the World Cup which will be staged in the Caribbean for the first time in that year. That possibility was raised yesterday when CLICO, the Trinidad and Tobago-based insurance giants announced their five-year $5 million sponsorship of the West Indies Under-15 Championships. The tournament involving the region’s six First Class cricket nations gets going on March 29 and ends on April 9. Details of the partnership between CLICO and the WICB were given yesterday at a media conference staged at the CL Financial Executive Suite at the Queen’s Park Oval in Port-of-Spain.

Present were CLICO officials Claudius Dacon (Chief Executive Officer); Ian Garcia (Vice-President of Marketing and Public Affairs); Roger Brathwaite (Chief Executive Officer of the West Indies Cricket Board) and Alloy Lequay (Chief Executive Officer of the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board). Rangy Nanan, former national cricket captain, now manager of the CLICO Preysal team was also presented as a member of the insurance company’s team by sports consultant and well-known broadcaster Anthony Harford. Speaking after the formalities of the sponsorship, Brathwaite said that the WICB is not averse to a proposal to stage a World Under-15 Championship especially if CLICO is involved. In his address Dacon traced CLICO’s involvement in cricket sponsorship which was first initiated when Harford suggested their support of then little known Second Division team Preysal.

Dacon said that at that time it sounded as a “lunatic enterprise” but were swayed since CLICO were impressed with Preysal’s youth development programme. “Naturally we at CLICO were thrilled when in 2000 the West Indies Under-15 team won the World Youth Cricket Championships with four Preysal players on that team,” Dacon said. “Since that time two of those players have gone on to distinguished themselves. Ravi Rampaul has already played at the highest level and we fully expect Dinesh Ramdin to soon follow as well,” said Dacon.

The success of the relationship between CLICO and Preysal, Dacon said, provides further proof that investment in youth pays rich dividends. So CLICO had no hesitation when Harford approached the company with a proposal to fund the West Indies Under-15 Championship. CLICO VP Garcia explained that apart from the sponsorship value of at least one million dollars a year, they will also fund the teams’ clothing kit, a reception, presentation function and dinner for the players and “Man-of-The-Match” Awards. In addition there will be a US$1,500 incentive for the Most Valuable Player of the tournament which will go towards the realisation of his academic pursuits.