"In my own mind, Garth, I have already determined that. I know I have got to leave the scene at a certain time."

The words trip easily off Alloy Lequay's lips.

But I wonder just how easy they really are for him to say.

By his own admission, the current president and CEO of the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board is not thinking about ending his innings just yet. Not even after 21 years in office. But the signs are there for those who have eyes to see.

"People might not have recognized it," says Lequay, "but the first vice-president Ellis Lewis has taken on a much more active role in the last three years than previously."

Then he pats the stack of papers near his left hand and draws my gaze to them.

Contained in those pages are the makings of an autobiography.

'This I am writing here," he says, patting the stack, "I am dedicating to the young people of the country."

"I have asked them to understand that though you might have come from a very humble and poor background, by your own dedication, by your own self-reliance, you can achieve as much as you want to achieve."

After sixty years both in the private sector and public life, the East Dry River-born southerner is living proof of that.

It's a long way from being a two-dollar-a-week clerk to being the chairman of a political party (NAR) and at the same time, the boss of a major sporting organization. Especially for a man with just three years of secondary schooling.

In his very own words, this soon-to-be 75-year-old is trying to put things in perspective, to determine his legacy.

The winds of change are blowing in local cricket, putting the past and the present very much in focus for Lequay.

As well as the future.

For the first time, his presidency is being challenged.

In the recent Central Zone and National League elections, the Anthony Harford faction won the majority of seats. And with the October 30 TTCB Annual General Meeting about a month-and-a-half away, another term is not certain.

"I feel in the final analysis, I am putting on the table three words," he says: "integrity, performance and achievement."

The "opposition" may be bending ears and turning heads in this battle for the soul of local cricket. But Lequay is standing firm.

"If people don't want to vote for that," he declares, "then so be it!"

The tried and trusted may have lost its appeal for some of the membership. But Lequay still has faith in history. In his story.

'I would not say I have been a perfect human being," he says.

'But I feel that I have consistently kept my focus."

Not quite as old as the hills, Lequay is an ancient in the sport game. In the 54 years since he became the Oxford Club's general secretary he has worked long and hard and succeeded at making things work.

It is a point his challenger readily concedes.

From 1944 to 1973, Lequay was a livewire in table tennis, eventually bowing out as president and general secretary of the Caribbean Federation.

And in cricket, from the time he began to fun the affairs of Oxford in 1945 to the time when he successfully led the fight for the autonomy of the Trinidad Cricket Council, till now, he has worked and worked and worked.

"I like organizing," he explains, "I like assisting people."

On this morning, he is at the Queen's Park Oval, one meeting about cricket for Commonwealth parliamentarians completed, another with a completely different agenda soon to come.

The schedule seems endless. But such energy has not been without a price.

"My marriage fell apart in the mid-seventies,' Lequay confesses, "And it is again perhaps because I did not pay sufficient attention to my own family life."

If marriage did not prove to be a success, cricket certainly filled the void. The combination of the foot soldier's industry and the politician's street savvy has got the president over many hurdles. But Lequay is most proud of the battle that culminated in 1980.

"That was a tremendous struggle that took me up to President's House to talk to Ellis Clarke."

Up to the 1970s, national cricket was still effectively under the control of the Queen's Park Cricket Club. That was until the Reece Commission eventually ruled that there must be an independent body for cricket. The decentralization of the game to give players from rural communities greater representation at a higher level is also an achievement Lequay claims with pride. Rapidly he names the "country boys" who have become national players in the last two decades.

When he lists them, there is an extra something in the president's voice. But the timbre is noticeable lower when he begins to talk about what he perceives as a threat to that growth.

"I have no problem with the democratic process," he begins. "But this is not simply a democratic process, it is a hostile takeover!"

This is not the first inkling of this conspiracy theory.

In his note from the president's desk in the TTCB's 1999 fixtures booklet, Lequay makes thinly veiled references to the supposed motives of his challenger and denounces people who are in sport for selfish reasons. Today, an angry Lequay stands by his words.

"It has nothing to do," his clenched left fist thumps the table, sending echoes through the empty room, "with the promotion of cricket in Trinidad and Tobago.

"What has happened in the last year," he continues, "has proved me right.

"You'd be surprised how this campaign is going, almost as if it is a political campaign, with politicians who have no morality or integrity just doing what they feel!"

And he ends by declaring himself a mere bystander in the "war".

Loaded words, I tell myself.

Not for the first time, the president is not pulling his punches, not afraid to speak his mind. It has always been like that.

And his pronouncements have not always won him new friends. Who can forget the time his TTCB claimed there was a conspiracy against T&T players on the part of the West Indies selectors.

The words of the politician Lequay, I ask.

"Not at all," he dismisses me breezily. "Purely personality and how you treat people. I was satisfied in my mind at the time that the selectors were being influenced by some of the journalists. David Williams was hounded out of the West Indies team."

"And," he continues, "I am on record at the West Indies Board - not in defence of Brian Lara as some people say - as pointing out that the approach to disciplining professional cricketers is wrong!"

He remains unconvinced that WICB policy is sensitive enough to the needs of its employees.

"Right now, I am satisfied in my mind that (Shivnarine) Chanderpaul needs counselling. But nobody is helping him. And we are going to lose him if he does not get help."

He hopes that the national cricket development centre, now under construction will be able to help all those in need, technically and otherwise.

"I have always emphasized that we are not only organizing competitions for people to play and win prizes. We are organizing sport for human development."

The centre, the president says, is his one remaining mission in cricket, the final element of the legacy he wishes to leave.

It will never happen if challenger Harford has his way.

And Lequay admits it would be "a disappointment" if he were not given the mandate to see the project through.

Nowadays, he cannot be certain how this story will end. But come October 30, he will be putting his faith in his three words to win him the battle against "a few pieces of silver."

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