Cricket Academy coming to TT

SPORTS MINISTER Roger Boynes hinted that together with the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board, his ministry will establish a sports academy, and assured it is going to be second to none. He said:  “I met with UDECOTT a couple of days ago and I laid down the mandate for them that the PM has brought to the Cabinet a note and obtained the approval for us not only to establish the Brian Lara Cricket Stadium in Union Park, but to establish a sports academy that will also serve as a Caribbean cricket academy and that would extend not only from Union Park in the south but would extend all the way up to the Ato Boldon Stadium.” He made the statement while slamming the Corporate Sector for jumping on the George Bovell III Olympic bronze medal bandwagon to gain mileage for their business firms “when in truth and in fact they have done nothing to assist in his achievement.

“It is nothing short of a national disgrace to see how they are taking out one paid advertisement after another to congratulate him (Bovell III) on his bronze medal success when all along they stood by the wayside watching him struggle to be one of the three best 200m individual medley swimmers in the world,” he said. Boynes was delivering the feature address at the annual prize distriubtion  function of the SIS Balmain United Cricket Club, at the Auditorium of Super Industrial Services, Rivulet Road, Brechin Castle, California, on Saturday night. “We see them all over the place now that George Bovell III  has won a bronze medal in swimming creating victory in the English     speaking Caribbean, and for that we celebrate him. He commended Super Industrial Services for sponsoring the Balmain United Cricket Club to the sum of $20,000 during the past season and was looking forward to the company to repeat their sponsorship for 2005.

He expressed the hope that other firms would jump into the arena and be of asssistance to sporting organisations so that “we could all develop a winning syndrome as a nation.” On the subject of  the cricket Test between West Indies and England,  Boynes noted that “we have been subjected to a whitewash and I say that we need a lot of work in WI cricket. “Before we got the Brown Package, I spoke to Mr Teddy Griffith the chairman, the president in fact of the WICB and he told me a few months ago that we do need assistance in WI cricket.” Boynes praised SIS Balmain United for their level of performance in the Super League and hoped that they would be victorious next season. Three former cricketers of Balmain who were pioneers in helping to form the club in 1949 Mungaroo Bideshi, Desmond Baxter and Edward Ramsaroop   were later honoured.