Cricket graduates told to restore WI pride

PowerGen’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Garth Chatoor called on the first set of graduates of the Sir Frank Cricket Academy yesterday to help restore West Indian pride.

Twenty-two young men ended their tenure at the academy yesterday at Balmain Village, Couva.  Chatoor was on hand to deliver the feature address. He said, “I can think of no single deed that we do that can be more rewarding then restoring West Indian pride.” “We ask nothing, except that you be fearless, we expect nothing, except that you be brave and we demand nothing except that you be committed. Get up and take notice and get our cricket back to the way it was,” Chatoor urged. He called on the youngsters to grab every opportunity offered and make themselves better. “In my view this programme has less to do with cricket and more to do with the business of living. To me it is about a journey into your self. If you choose never to pick up a bat again we will mourn the loss of a talent.” “When I addressed our graduates at the launch of this programme in September 2002, I indicated to the youngsters that success would be determined by the amount of hard work they put in. Even if you are the most gifted sportsman but do not possess the correct attitude then you will never be successful,” he said.

Chatoor also touched on the point of youngsters growing up in a different era and being attracted to other sports and not cricket. As one commentator said, “we forget that ‘www’ to you (youngsters) means the world wide web, while to us it means Weeks, Worrell and Walcott. I submit that in directing your obvious talent and capability, we need to pay less attention to trying to relive our nostalgia of the past, but rather use it merely as a frame of reference and a point of departure to determine where we go from here. Rather than looking backward or forward it maybe preferable to look upward.” Chatoor closed off by hinting that the vacant post of president of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), should be given to the one logical choice and this is Alloy Lequay, president of the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board of Control (TTCBC). Lequay conceptualised the Aca-demy and developed the idea.