‘Friends’ respond to Mahabir barbs

It is response to Baldath Mahabir, second vice-president of the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board who criticised several officials of the group in an article in yesterday’s Newsday.

"It is with great disappointment rather than anger that I note the tactics being employed by the Dudnath Ramkessoon slate in response to the challenge they face from the Friends of Cricket in this weekend’s national elections.

I refer specifically to an article in yesterday’s Newsday in which current TTCB Second vice-president Baldath Mahabir accuses a number of people now aligned with Friends of Cricket of having made no contribution to cricket during their years of service on the Board.

I myself named along with Deryck Murray, Forbes Persaud and Azim Bassarath, four of our five candidates in Saturday’s elections. The article also name Deryck’s father Lance, Umpires’ Association President Clarence Shaffarali and former East Zone Secretary Camal Basdeo.

Saturday’s elections are national elections and we are ranged against the current Board Executive for the right to run national cricket. So we in Friends would have hoped at that level to see the focus unremittingly on issues and not on personalities.

Obviously, however, Mr Ramkessoon’s men clearly see the tide turning against them and are desperate to steer their leaky ship to safety.

Mahabir asks where were our voices when the Board was wringing in the constitutional changes designed to improve national cricket. My response is that they were being either ignored or silenced by the same men now seeking to get approval to perpetuate their destruction of our cricket.

Neither Mr Persaud nor Mr Murray, both of whom have for years been very vocal on cricketing issues in different fora needs an advocate to hold brief for them. I shall therefore respond largely for myself as well as for Mr Bassarath.

I left the Board in 1994 and returned in 2001. My contribution as TTCB General Secretary from 1981 to 1991 is a matter of public record.

What is less well known is that between 2002 and the present, I worked on several major projects which have not seen the light of day. In 2002, I served on the Zonal Club Development Committee which had been chaired by Mr Bassarath from 1999 to 2002.

For that committee, I produced an extensive paper which included workshop documents and detailed questionnaires.

Let me say here for the record that Mr Bassarath’s stewardship of that committee as well as of the South East Zone has been widely praised both in Board circles and in the media. It is he who by his inspired leadership has made South East into the best run zone in the country.

In 2003, I collaborated with the Secondary Schools’ Cricket League to produce another substantial paper on the relationship between the Board and the SSCL.

Last year saw a third major paper from me on ground presentation for clubs by local government authorities. It seems to me that Mr Mahabir and company could usefully tell the country what has happened to those three papers.