Former player calls for minister to regulate annual cricket trip

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Former national and West Indies cricketer, Kenneth Benjamin, has called on the Minister of Sports, EP Chet Greene, to regulate what he is calling an “injustice” to the winning schools cricket team here.
Benjamin said the annual practice of sending a combined schools team to the Sir Garfield Sobers Schools Cricket Tournament in Barbados is a flawed one and that it is the champion school that should be competing in the tournament.
“I am calling on the minister to [look] into this because the schools should benefit and not just pick a team; I want them to know that I said that and I don’t care who vex. It is about time we do something about this nonsense that has been going on for too long,” he said. 
A 20-member team departed Antigua last Friday for Barbados where they will seek to defend the country’s 2016 title.
According to Benjamin, however, other teams competing at the tournament have complained about Antigua’s practice of sending a “national team” to the schools team competition.
The ex-player believes the trip should act as a motivation for the schools taking part in the ministry’s competition.
“The ministry [of sports] is absolutely bleeding money on this thing here because every year they send a [lot] of officials to a schools tournament when they should let the winning school go. That is how you are going to get people interested and working hard so the team can win and go to Barbados, and so that the coach and the person who supports the coach in the school goes. But everybody in the ministry wants to go to Barbados so they are not going to send a school team,” Benjamin said.
The team is comprised of Kadeem Henry, Devonte Williams, Joshua Thomas, Tassilo Allen, Miandre James, Jedidiah Martin, Asher Cornelius, Essau Warner, Garry Duberry and Daniel Richards.
The other players are Timmo Thomas, Keeshan Daawuud, Rasheed Henry, Deshawn Henry, Shawn Joseph, Kenny Sutton, Emmanuel Lawrence, Kobe Tittle, Cornelius Jules and Jahiem Africa.
 
 
 

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