This is the view of president of PowerGen Sports Club, Chaitram Ramjitsingh.
PowerGen has decided in recent times to go totally local and has won the Eastern Credit Union Premiership title for the past two years, with no foreign cricketers onboard.
According to Ramjitsingh, PowerGen has been able to do well without foreign players because they have a very good development programme, that feeds the senior team.
“We have a very good development programme at PowerGen and we are able to feed our senior team with quality cricketers. We have cricketers training from the under-13 level and we take part in under-15, under-19 and senior tournaments.
“At any one time, we have about 60 cricketers of different ages rostered at the club. This is a very healthy situation and without the foreign professional we have been able to introduce our young players to better development programmes because we take the extra money we now have and channel it, into the programmes.
“I am not saying that the foreign player is not of benefit to the club, we have had Guyanese players who have served as well but we have shown that you can win titles with the players right here and also give more of them the exposure. We at PowerGen have produced many top cricketers for the national team and we will continue to do that because of our development programmes.
Ramjitsingh said being around the top local clubs in Trinidad and looking at their structure, there are a lot of clubs without proper development programmes.
“Many of the clubs don’t have proper development programmes and they will continue to import players from the region to assist their team, so the for time being, the foreign players are still very much in the game.”
In 2010, a total off 37 Guyanese players played professionally in Trinidad and Tobago.
