New format in Secondary Schools in 2010
June 26th, 2009

A new format to the Championship Division of the PowerGen Secondary Schools Cricket League will take place in 2010.

This was revealed by William Wallace, president of the SSCL during his address on Thursday at the league’s annual presentation function at the JFK Auditorium, Uniiversity of the West Indies in St Augustine.

Wallace said that the present format of having eight schools participating in the North and South Championship has not produced the standard of cricket that is expected at this level, since half of the teams are not as competitive as they should be.

“ Our objective is to raise the standard of cricket by allowing high performance schools to compete against each other without the confinement of geographical boundaries. In 2011, therefore the best eight or ten schools in T&T would make-up the Championship Division,” Wallace said.

He said that the transition will take place in 2010, when the top four schools in the North-East and top four in South-Central Divisions (based on the 2009 season), will play in one group and the other four schools from each division playing in another group, will will create a temporary two tier system, and at the end of the season, relegation and promotion will determine the top eight or ten schools that would participate in 2011.

Forbes Persaud, chief executive officer (CEO) and general secretary of the T&T Cricket Board thanked PowerGen for its continued support in the further development of the sport in T&T and by extension, the region.

He said that the SSCL has been making an extremely valuable contribution to cricket in T&T, and without its support, cricket would have been in dire straits.

Persaud slammed the detractors who are opposed to the current administration (T&TCB) for the re-formation of the East and South-West Zone.

“They brought all kinds of reasoning forward, why we should not bring the zones into being. At that time what we saw was a definite need for organised cricket in that area and we brought back the zones.

“The results have shown that the East Zone has won every Interzone Youth tournament this past season. They captured the British Gas U-13, U-15, U-17 and U-19 titles, making a clean sweep in the age-group tournaments. Today we are very proud of the move,” Persaud said.