Secondary intercol cricket final under lights

PRINCES TOWN Senior Comprehensive will play Barrackpore Senior in the final of the 2004 PowerGen Secondary Schools Intercol cricket final under floodlights at Guaracara Park on Monday. And yesterday, Barrackpore skipper Jason Mohammed sent out a warning to the Princes Town lads, the title is his because his team will give them a  thrashing. But counterpart Andre Brown was quietly confident and said his team will be going all out to preserve the proud record of the Green Hornets. This is Princes Town’s fourth trip to Guaracara Park for the final, while for Barrackpore it will be their first. Apart from bragging rights, the teams will be playing for more than $6,000 in prize money.

PowerGen’s corporate communications manager, Omar Khan said at the Queen’s Park Oval yesterday: “We at PowerGen want you to know that we strongly believe in the young people of the nation.” And he urged the teams: “Go out there and do us proud. Make your school proud and by extension, your community and your country.” This season marks the eighth consecutive occasion PowerGen is sponsoring the schools’ cricket league. Khan who is also the manager of the senior national cricketers said:  “Despite the doom and gloom that all Caribbean cricket fans are currently experiencing, we at PowerGen still regard the sponsorship of the Secondary Schools Cricket League as a meaningful and beneficial investment in our nation’s young aspiring cricketers.

“It’s times like these when sponsors of  the game need the support of all the other stakeholders, so together we could work towards a realistic plan for the upliftment of our cricket. “We at PowerGen do hope that our cricket will return to those heady days when the West Indies team dominated for 17 years. “To return to those days though, our cricket needs to go back to its roots and establish solid foundations at the youth and school levels on which we can build later, and this is what we hope to achieve with our sponsorship of the Secondary Schools Cricket League.” Khan also made mention that the six Trinidad and Tobago players in the West Indies Under-19 team, beaten finalists at the recent  ICC World Youth Cup, all passed through the PowerGen cricket league.

Rishi Bachan who was a top spinner at the tournament will be in the Barrackpore team for Monday’s game. Later, SSCL president Forbes Persaud urged Khan to apply to the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) for the post of manager of the West Indies team, given his tremendous understanding of the game and his professional qualifications as an administrator. Meanwhile, SSCL secretary Surujdath Mahabir announced winners of the “Scoring” and “Might is Right” competitions. Matthew Rodriguez of Tranquillity won the scoring competition for both January and February, while Dion Ravello and Jabari Fraser were respective “Might is Right” winners for the same period. Admission to the game is free of charge on Monday and officials of PowerGen, as well as the SSCL will meet the players before the 5 pm start.