The tiny country that keeps producing T20 superstars

What's in the water of Trinidad and Tobago that makes it churn out some of the biggest names in the format?

Three of the four men to have played over 500 professional T20 matches hail from the same country, which can also lay claim to two of the format's three highest wicket-takers, its third-highest run-scorer, and three of the eight men who have won multiple T20 World Cup finals. It is a track record that would make India, Australia, or Pakistan proud - but remarkably, it belongs to a nation of just 1.5 million people.

Dwayne Bravo, Kieron Pollard and Sunil Narine are, unequivocally, T20 legends who have shaped the format's evolution. All three were born within 20 miles of one another in the north of Trinidad, between 1983 and 1988.

"It's a haven for T20 cricketers," says Daren Ganga, the former West Indies captain who led Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) in 36 of their first 37 T20s.

Bravo, Samuel Badree and Denesh Ramdin have all won two men's T20 World Cup finals with West Indies; Pollard, Narine, Ravi Rampaul and Lendl Simmons won one each. Four Trinidadian players were part of the West Indies team that won the women's T20 World Cup in 2016: Merissa Aguilleira, Britney Cooper, Stacy-Ann King and Anisa Mohammed.

Now a new generation has broken through: Nicholas Pooran is one of the most sought after players on the global T20 circuit, and he is joined in West Indies' 2024 T20 World Cup squad by the canny fingerspinner Akeal Hosein.

"Pollard getting that opportunity - that was game-changing for us, in Trinidad and in the whole region… it was the paradigm shift from everything else towards a focus on T20 cricket"

"It really is quite amazing what we have been able to accomplish as a small island on the global scale in this format," Badree says.

The first official T20 matches were played between English counties in 2003, but Ganga believes Trinidad and Tobago benefited from a "first-mover advantage" by embracing the format when it came to the Caribbean three years later.

It was introduced by Allen Stanford, the Texan pseudo-financier who launched a lucrative inter-island competition in Antigua before he was arrested in 2009 for massive fraud and then sentenced to 110 years in jail.

T&T had enjoyed success in domestic cricket, winning the List A competition in 2004-05 and breaking a two-decade drought in the first-class championship in 2006. But they were short of their stars for the inaugural Stanford tournament: Brian Lara was in London on business, four players were on a West Indies A tour to England, and Bravo was - incongruously - playing for Kent in the County Championship.

T&T won 72% of the matches that Kieron Pollard (right) featured in, giving Daren Ganga (centre) an enviable win-loss ratio of 3.2 during his reign the team captain Kunal Patil / © Hindustan Times/Getty Images

"There was an opportunity for us to groom a peripheral group of young players in a new version of the game," Ganga recalls. "It gave us the latitude to be adventurous and to try new things." Ganga had already been exposed to unofficial short-form leagues - Martin Crowe's Cricket Max in New Zealand, and Pro Cricket in the United States - and prided himself on being "tactically shrewd" as a leader.

They played T20 in a futuristic style, with the attacking opening batter William Perkins leading from the front and a young Pollard in their middle order. Rayad Emrit was primarily used as a specialist death bowler, and Badree opened the bowling with his fast, flat wristspin.

"We had a 30-over competition in club cricket prior to the advent of T20," Badree says, "and I'd had great success opening the bowling there. It was essentially the same skill."

Trinidad's cricketing culture was ideally suited to the rise of T20. Unofficial short-form leagues were already popular. These were often played with plastic windballs, hard plastic balls of the kind seen in kids' cricket.

Norman Mungroo's windball tournament in Tacarigua, Pollard's hometown, celebrates its 20th anniversary this year and has featured countless international players. "Everyone would flock to see it," Ganga says. "Balls would be struck out of the park and innovations were welcome."

T&T were runners-up in the inaugural Stanford tournament in 2006; two years later, they thrashed Jamaica to lift the trophy, winning a US$1 million prize. The financial incentives in the tournament were vast: the Player-of-the-Match award was worth US$25,000, and the "play of the day" was valued at $10,000. By contrast, a match fee for a West Indies domestic four-day game was around $500.

After winning the title in 2008, the squad were presented with diamond-encrusted gold championship rings. Five days later most of them were back home for a four-day match against Jamaica, played at a near-deserted Queen's Park Oval. "If there were 100 people at the ground, I'd be surprised," Ganga says. "Whatever you were motivated by, T20 cricket had everything: the following, the prestige, and the money."

And the money kept coming in: when Stanford invited England to play his "Superstars", effectively a West Indies XI playing under a different name due to a commercial dispute, in a $20 million showdown in October 2008, T&T beat Middlesex - the Twenty20 Cup champions - to secure a $280,000 payday from a one-off match. Pollard, Emrit and the left-arm wristspinner Dave Mohammed were all picked by the Superstars, who thrashed England by ten wickets to win the jackpot, taking home $1m each. Stanford's fraud was exposed a few months later.

Allen Stanford (centre), a benefactor for West Indies cricket - till he wasn't © AFP

As defending West Indian champions, T&T were invited to the inaugural Champions League T20 in India in 2009, some 20 months after winning the inter-island Stanford 20/20 title.

"We can say the regional and national pride was the No. 1 motivation - but [teams] got $500,000 as a participation fee," Badree recalls. "Even before you set foot on the field, there was this huge sum of money in front of you; and there was the opportunity of doing well and making it into an IPL team. Players wanted that big stage to showcase their talent."

T20 was lucrative business but T&T's players were conscious that it could be a bubble that was about to burst: they had seen the Indian Cricket League fold after two seasons, against the backdrop of the global financial crisis.

"There were a few players who invested back with Stanford and lost their money, and a few who invested in a company in Trinidad that fell apart a few years later," Badree recalls. "Stanford's tournament lasted for two years. You were thinking, 'How long is this IPL going to last?' As a cricketer, you only have a certain shelf life. Guys were looking to capitalise on their earning potential."

T&T won their first five matches at the Champions League, including a tight victory over IPL winners Deccan Chargers in the first round. West Indies' reputation had suffered during their shambolic hosting of the 2007 World Cup, prompting Ganga to reiterate after that win against Chargers - and throughout the tournament - that his side were representing the whole region. Their batting power and tactical nous caught several teams by surprise before their eventual defeat to New South Wales in the final.

"The team became a marketable brand. We had national gas companies and tourism companies just pumping money into T&T cricket because we had a global team"

It was a breakout tournament for several players, but Pollard in particular. When T&T played NSW in the group stage, he muscled 54 not out off 18 balls to seal an improbable victory. It proved to be the innings that changed his life. IPL franchises were watching closely: Chennai Super Kings, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, Kolkata Knight Riders and Mumbai Indians all bid $750,000 for him at the 2010 auction, with Mumbai winning his services via an undisclosed sealed bid.

"Pollard getting that opportunity, with the amount of money being bandied about, was when the whole mindset changed," Badree says. "That was game-changing for us, in Trinidad and in the whole region… it was the paradigm shift from everything else towards a focus on T20 cricket."

Pollard became a magnet for criticism. "Kieron Pollard, in my opinion, is not a cricketer," Michael Holding said in 2010. The same year, Pollard turned down a West Indies A team tour in order to play for Somerset in the T20 Blast; he and Bravo both turned down central contracts from the West Indies board to maximise their earnings playing in T20 leagues.

But Pollard's decisions were informed by his background: he was raised by his mother in a single-parent household on a housing estate in an area with "a stigma for violence and drugs", he said in Cricket 2.0. He became a father at 22, when his two younger sisters were still at school; after his first IPL payday, he said his ambition was to ensure his family "won't have to go through what I went through when I was growing up".

In 50 T20s for T&T between 2006 and 2013, Samuel Badree took 45 wickets at an economy of 4.74 Ashley Allen / © Getty Images

He was also conscious of his responsibility to give back. In 2012, he launched the Kieron Pollard scholarship, which funded a summer playing club cricket in England for the inaugural winner: his future team-mate Akeal Hosein. "I came over [to England] for two or three months before the Under-19 World Cup. Polly sorted out everything," Hosein recalls. "It showed me what it takes to be a professional - how you have to live, and how to do things on your own."

Hosein came through the ranks of Queen's Park Cricket Club, an institution that has played a substantial role in the development of T&T's greats over the years. The club owns the iconic Queen's Park Oval in Port-of-Spain and counts Pollard, Narine, both Bravos and Pooran among their graduates. "It is unique: no other territory can boast of a private institution that has that financial support and facilities that players have access to," says Badree, who is not affiliated to QPCC. "Everywhere else, it's public clubs that are barely keeping themselves afloat."

International players regularly return to represent QPCC in domestic tournaments and to use the club's training facilities. "Once you create that professional environment, everyone starts pushing each other," Hosein says. "Maybe that's one of the reasons why so many players came through one particular club. When you turn up at training, you know it's not going to be a walk in the park. It was always 'We are going to train like professionals, because that is what we are.' I think we're a step ahead of the guys at other clubs."

T&T's Champions League near-miss in 2009 brought commercial attention, both at home and abroad. "The team became a marketable brand," Ganga says. "Sponsors were coming on board: we had national gas companies and tourism companies just pumping money into T&T cricket because we had a global team." They were even part of a short-lived tie-up with Rajasthan Royals, Hampshire and Cape Cobras, which would have seen them renamed "Trinidad and Tobago Royals".

"These guys, they don't only give you information on the cricket field, they help you to become a better person in life"

With the West Indies board in administrative chaos and unable to compete with the wages on offer in the new wave of leagues, T&T's players became hot property around the world. The mid-2010s were a golden age for a golden generation: in 2014, as many as seven Trinidadians were exposed to the cutting edge of T20 cricket at the IPL, with Bravo, Narine and Pollard joined by Badree, Simmons, Rampaul and Kevon Cooper. At home they won three Caribbean T20 titles in a row from 2011 to 2013, and the third edition of the Caribbean Premier League in 2015.

Around one-third of T&T's population have Indian heritage. Nearly 150,000 indentured Indian workers arrived in the country between 1845 and 1917, coerced into unpaid contracts by British colonialists. There are similarities in the two cricketing cultures and Badree suggests that the success of T&T's players in the subcontinent is no surprise. "We are used to surfaces that have a little bit of turn and are much slower," he says. "And we've grown up on a diet of spin, so when batters come across to the IPL and encounter spin there, they're much better able to cope with it than players from South Africa, Australia or England."

While T&T were front-runners, they were not the only West Indies players looking further afield than the Caribbean in the T20 era. Chris Gayle became Jamaica's most valuable export since Captain Morgan rum; his compatriots Marlon Samuels and Andre Russell joined him in playing around the world, as did the St Lucians Daren Sammy and Johnson Charles. They rarely played bilateral T20Is but enjoyed unparalleled success at three successive T20 World Cups: champions in 2012, semi-finalists in 2014, and champions again in 2016.

From the old come the new: Kieron Pollard and Dwayne Bravo, who laid the foundation for T&T's dominance in T20 cricket, flank their heirs, Nicholas Pooran and Akeal Hosein at the ILT20 last year Creimas / © ILT20

They are achievements that T&T's greats still consider the pinnacle of their careers, despite their success elsewhere. Pollard has won 16 official T20 finals - second only to Bravo's 17 - yet has described West Indies' 2012 success as his most cherished medal. Pollard (injury) and Narine (bowling action) both missed out in 2016, but IPL experience still told. When Simmons - who had spent two seasons with Mumbai Indians - was called up at short notice as an injury replacement, he hit 82 not out to take West Indies across the line in their semi-final against India at his adopted home ground, the Wankhede Stadium.

In 2024, Hosein and Pooran are the two T&T players hoping to lead West Indies to an unprecedented third men's T20 World Cup on home soil, with a vital first-round fixture against New Zealand due to be staged at the government-owned Brian Lara Academy in Tarouba in the south of Trinidad, as well as a potential semi-final. Both men are approaching or at their peak - Hosein is 31, Pooran 28 - and have benefited throughout their careers from the mentoring of the generation above. "It is a simple case of success breeding success," Ganga says.

"When you're rubbing shoulders with quality players, you elevate yourself to try to reach those guys' levels," Hosein says. "Once you gain the information, the process, the experiences that they have, and you start implementing it into your game, then the sky's the limit for you. These guys, they don't only give you information on the cricket field, they help you to become a better person in life. They are trying to pass on knowledge and advice and help younger players coming up to be holistically better as human beings."

"Whatever you were motivated by, T20 cricket had everything: the following, the prestige, and the money"

Other countries have recognised the value in their experience. At the T20 World Cup, Pollard and Bravo will work as consultants for England and Afghanistan respectively, while Phil Simmons - who coached West Indies to the 2016 title - is with Papua New Guinea.

There are some concerns that T&T's focus on T20 has been detrimental to their production of red-ball players. Hosein is a case in point: he started his career aspiring to play all formats and made his professional debut in four-day cricket rather than T20, but he has not played a first-class match since May 2022. Joshua Da Silva and Jayden Seales are both set to feature in West Indies' Test tour to England in July, but T&T have not won the regional championship since 2006. "It is going to the point of no return, where that bias towards T20 is difficult to shift back to the point of equilibrium across formats," fears Ganga.

Trinidad and Tobago's historic links with India remain strong. Red Chillies Entertainment, the company founded by the actor Shah Rukh Khan, bought a stake in Trinidad's CPL franchise in 2015 and renamed them Trinbago Knight Riders in 2016; earlier this year, TKR sponsored Trinidad's domestic T20 festival. More recently, Pollard has engineered a partnership between Mukesh Ambani's Reliance - which owns Mumbai Indians - and the T&T government, with plans in place to launch an academy in Trincity. Their stated aim is to develop all-format cricketers rather than T20 specialists. There would be an irony in IPL franchises helping T&T to address the shortcomings of their first-class side.

Earlier this year, Pollard, Bravo, Pooran and Hosein won the ILT20 together, playing for MI Emirates - the Abu Dhabi affiliate of Mumbai Indians. With Pollard and Bravo approaching the end of their careers, it represented two generations of T&T's T20 cricketers coming together. "These guys aren't only great in Trinidad and Tobago, or West Indies," Hosein says. "These guys are legends all over the world. We aspire to be that. Anyone would have that aim: to reach that sort of legendary status." The World Cup will provide them with an opportunity to do so.

Matt Roller is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo. @mroller98

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