Ramnarine seeks harmony with WICB

The 30-year-old ex-Windies leg-spinner made his wishes known during WIPA’s Christmas and Appreciation Cocktail Reception at the Grande Riviere Room, Courtyard, Mariott Hotel in Mucurapo on Tuesday night.

WIPA was involved in a controversial spat with the Board over player contractual issues, with the International Cricket Council (ICC) and the Federation of International Cricketers Association (FICA) reaching an agreement on resolving the dispute.

In an address to the gathering, which also included President George Maxwell Richards (a patron of WIPA) and his wife Dr Jean Ramjohn-Richards, Ramnarine also urged sponsors to assist in the development, and growth of West Indies cricket

"I want to make a case for greater sponsorship of our youngsters, in or out of school, who keep this great and glorious game alive in the playgrounds, the streets, the beaches and the minds of our West Indian people," said the former national and West Indies leg-spinner.

Concerning the Players Association, Ramnarine said its mission "deals exclusively with the game’s only real asset, its players.

"WIPA assists the development of young cricketers," he continued. "We support the cricket professionals and we help to sustain the retired players."

He further stated, "we can’t do it alone. The reason we have got such tremendous support from the sponsors whose contribution to West Indies cricket is because we all have a dream of taking West Indies cricket to the highest heights of cricketing excellence. "We know that we cannot reach for the stars unless we have a solid launching pad, the platform for progress," he added. "Our sponsors have provided this support beyond measure. They are our stepping stone to the stars, the entry point to the gateway of opportunity for our talented young people."

Ramnarine, who have been at the helm of WIPA for nearly three years, extended his gratitude to a number of corporate bodies, including First Citizens Bank (FCB), bpTT, Supreme Ventures, Trinidad Cement Limited, Prestige Holdings, Toyota Trinidad and Tobago Limited, Carib Brewery, TSTT, Petrotrin and Media 21.

Ramnarine also spoke on the direction West Indies cricket is currently taking, with constant mention of the team being in transition.

"We keep hearing that West Indies cricket is at the crossroads and then we come to those crossroads and we find that we are still at the crossroads and all we can see ahead of us are more and more crossroads," the WIPA boss noted.

"It is either that the road to success and the pathway to perfection are crossroads, or that the future of West Indies cricket is always at a perpetual and permanent crossroad because we lack the road-map or plan to how we get to the future from the present," Ramnarine stressed.

But he stated, "if we put the right programmes in place at the very beginning of the cricketing lives of our youth, the next time we get back on top of the world we will be there to stay."

Among the cricketing personnel in attendance were West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) president Ken Gordon, chairman of the WI selection panel Joey Carew, Sports Minister Roger Boynes, TT players Daren and Sherwin Ganga, Richard Kelly and Mervyn Dillon as well as former West Indies players Colin Croft, Bernard Julien, Rangy Nanan and Rajindra Dhanraj.