Club Crusoe ready to stun Cane Farm

Former UWI T20 champions Club Crusoe will be counting on an experienced team to get past a weakened Cane Farm in the opening match of the 2018 edition which bowls off at 6.30pm tomorrow at the Sir Frank Worrel Grounds, UWI, St Augustine.

This year’s tournament will be played in a knockout format from the opening day. Eight teams will feature this year with the first round of matches being virtual quarterfinals.

Cane Farm won the tournament last year with an all-star line-up. Some of the national players that featured for Cane Farm in 2017 were Ravi Rampaul, Lendl Simmons, Denesh Ramdin, Imran Khan, Ewart Nicholson, Rayad Emrit and Evin Lewis.

However, the Regional Four-Day tournament is currently taking place and a number of Cane Farm’s stars will not be competing in the UWI T20 tournament this year.

Club Crusoe opening batsman Jason Persaud said the Tobago team may be in with a great chance to eliminate Cane Farm.

“Last year they had a number of national players who would be occupied this year with the regional four-day (competition) playing for Trinidad and Tobago like Imran Khan, Ewart Nicholson, Denesh Ramdin – all these fellas played for them last year and they won’t be able to play this year.”

Persaud said Club Crusoe, who won the 2015 UWI T20 tournament, have enough quality in their team to defeat Cane Farm and go all the way to the $35,000 first prize.

“We have a couple of former national players in Nicholas Sookdeosingh; Atiba Allert, who is a former national fast bowler; we have Caldrac captain who is Tobago boy Ancil Nedd; we have this youngster from Tobago who just went to national trials, Iraq Thomas.” Persaud said Leron Lezama and Marcus Daniel are also part of the team this year. “The experience that we have, and most of these players would have played in the tournament before, so everybody is affiliated with the tournament. All of the guys that play in this Club Crusoe unit would have played some high division of cricket in Trinidad.”