Larry Romany said on Friday that it is very important for the Secondary Schools Cricket League (SSCL) to continue to liaise with the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board (TTCB), adding that "it is important to understand that cricket needs to maintain its relevance in the society and to maintain relevance with the sponsors".

Romany, president of the Trinidad and Tobago Olympic Committee (TTOC), made the statement during the feature address at the SSCL's 50th Anniversary Dinner and Awards Ceremony, at the Cascadia Hotel in St Ann's.

"It is no mystery to us that the most important aspect of the development of any sport takes place in the secondary schools system, so there must be an integrated system whereby the TTCB must have a say in what goes on at the secondary school level because at the end of the day teams are selected based on performance. And that performance comes about as a result of our development years."

Romany said understanding the pathways to success is very important to the development of sport at all levels, and that administrators need to employ long-term athlete development strategies.

"You all are the bastions of the doors that create opportunities, and you'll stand at the door and say come through. But are you inviting them to come through a closed door or are you inviting them to come through an open door? And when you open that door, is there emptiness on the other side or are there people waiting to nurture what you expect out of them at the end of the day? Expectation is only realised when you put something in and you plan for the outcome.

"If you are waiting at the end to get players to play on the national team and then go on to the West Indies team, and you have no input into what goes on at the earlier levels, then it's really a throw of the dice."

Romany said the development of cricket is not playing cricket, and competition does not create good cricketers or good sportsmen, though it is an important measure. He added that participation and evaluation are needed to understand what has happened in the past, and what we need to move forward.

"When you listen to conversations regarding sports you always hear people talking about who has potential, but in reality, how that potential is executed is determined by how we educate ourselves to execute that.

"We have a country full of knowledge. If we integrate that knowledge we're going to learn a lot and we'll be able to produce much better cricketers at the end of the day."

Romany said that while we have produced great cricketers in the past, success should not be measured by the number of great players since these players would have been great anyway.

"Great people come here to leave a legacy, they come here to live out their destiny so that others may understand what greatness means.

"We talk a lot about the great cricketers that have passed but we have had plenty teams in the last 50 years and you can't tell me 50 people alone were great. The real trick is how do we take all the cricketers and make them good cricketers. How do we take every athlete that's aspiring to be a national cricketer and give him every opportunity to be that cricketer."

By Donstan Bonn

Source: www.trinidadexpress.com