When neither the Trinidad and Tobago government nor a local company committed to support the national senior cricket team, a Trinidad and Tobago-born businessman managed to get India's largest poultry company to sponsor them in the Airtel Champion's League 20/20 Tournament, according to Trinidad Express.

Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board president, Deryck Murray, said that the sponsorship deal, which was in the works about three weeks before the start of the Asian competition, was only nailed down a few days before the T&T squad's departure.

The story of how the logo of Asia's largest poultry company Venky's (India) Limited, which employs 2.5 million people in the Asian sub-continent, became emblazoned across the chests of the T&T senior cricketers began when T&T captain, Daren Ganga, told his friend Neil Prashad about the troubles of his squad to secure sponsorship for the tournament.

Mr Prashad, an executive vice president of Bala Entertainment, the personal media company of Venky's owner, Dr Balaji Rao, introduced the idea to Dr Rao.

"By birth I'm Trinidadian. As a result of that when I found out through my friendship with Daren Ganga that the team had no sponsor, I was more than proud and happy to present Dr Balaji Rao for him to sponsor T&T through Venky's," Prashad revealed. Rao was said to have viewed tapes of Trinidad and Tobago senior cricketers in action, including their Stanford 20/20 winning performance.

Dr Rao is reported to have said: "I am proud to sponsor Trinidad and Tobago and extremely proud of the team thus far and the performance of all players and the captain Daren Ganga. I have intentions to expand my business in the Caribbean and Latin America based out of Trinidad, so this is just a snapshot of my cooperation with T&T by supporting the national team of T&T."

It seems that Dr Rao's enthusiasm is shared by the public in India with the sports pages of dailies hailing and praising the efforts and victories of the T&T team in their first two games.