kaiteur news
By Sean Devers
World renowned former West Indies Captain Shivnarine Chanderpaul PAGE 37yesterday signed an Agreement of Cooperation with Indian based Texila American University and will promote the institution, which has been in Guyana since 2010, for a one-year period as their Brand Ambassador.
The signing of the contract was done at the Pegasus Hotel and the outstanding Guyanese cricketer who holds the record for Test appearances by a West Indian and also the second most Test runs and centuries only behind Brian Lara, said it was always great to be recognised.
“It’s great to be recognised for what I have achieved in cricket and being the Ambassador of such a University is a great honor and a chance for me to give back to the students since I a well known person around the and I could use that to get more students to know about Texila American University†said the 41-year-old who has 133 First-Class tons, 30 of them at Test
level.
Chanderpaul told the gathering of Students, Administrators and the Media, that he was not known for speeches and joked that his presentation was along the innings he plays. It was indeed long but very informative and gave a great history of the Medical School which also has students studying Dentistry.
He told the students who are from India, Africa, Pakistan, Nepal, USA, Jamaica and T&T that there would be times when they would suffer setbacks but reminded that this was all part of their learning experience.
The left-hander from Unity Village said the foreign students, who number 127, would spend close US$5000 for food, travel and other things and said this was good for Guyana’s economy and the tourism industry.
He said before he became well known all he wanted to do was play cricket and he became successful because he worked and for long hours, he encouraged the students to do the same.
Among the persons representing the University which is the only one in the Caribbean, located in Sparendaam and Woolford Avenue, were its Vice Chancellor Dr Anand Arulsamy, Head of Operations Immanuel Surindram, Vice President International Operations Asriok Kumar who are all Indians and Guyanese Sherry Ferroll the Human Resource Manager.
The University has branches in USA, Zambia, Dubai, Philippians and India. The local branches have a staff which numbers 80, fifty three (53) of which are Guyanese nationals.
“Cricket is the most popular sport in Guyana and Shiv is well known all over the world as a cricketer with some wonderful records and we thought he would be able to influence a lot of potential students so we approached him with the help of Mr Orlando Charles who facilitated the process of getting him†informed Karu the accounts Manager.
In addition to signing the contract, Shiv presented an autographed bat to Dr Arulsamy and took out photos with the excited students.