Red Force coach welcomes WI players

DENESH RAMDIN and Darren Bravo are set to join the TT Red Force for their West Indies Championship second round meeting against the Leeward Islands Hurricanes, from January 4-7 at the Brian Lara Cricket Academy, Tarouba.

Both players were part of the West Indies team who ended their tour of Bangladesh last Saturday. Ramdin was a member of the T20 squad and Bravo featured in both the T20 and One Day Internationals. The 29 year old Bravo struggled badly on his return to international cricket after being exiled for close to a year. Ramdin failed to get a chance in the T20 series, as Shai Hope took the gloves and excelled with the bat. Bravo and Ramdin would be hoping to show their worth as they resume national duties.

The Red Force started their campaign on the wrong foot, losing to the Windward Islands Volcanoes by 76 runs in their first round match at Tarouba two weekends ago.

TT coach Kelvin Williams, in an interview on Friday, said, “I spoke to Ramdin (on Thursday) night and he assured me that he would be available for the next round and he don’t have any T20 contracts. That shows me that he’s committed.

“Darren Bravo will be available (as well as) Shannon Gabriel and Khary Pierre,” he added. “So these guys will be available.

“I am a part of the selection panel. We’ll have to sit down and decide the combination for the game against the Leeward Islands.”

The players are currently on a Christmas break and Williams said that the squad will resume training on Friday.

Against the Volcanoes, Jeremy Solozano (104 in the first innings) and Joshua Da Silva (41 in the second innings) top-scored with the bat and captain Imran Khan took 11 wickets for 126 runs.

However, Williams hopes that the batsmen will improve on their form as soon as possible.

“I did expect the batters to do well,” he said. “Bowling out the Windwards for 206 and having a lead of 19, I thought that lead was not sufficient in the situation that we actually (found) ourselves in. I thought we would have scored (over) 300 runs and gave them (a big) lead. If we had (done) that, the game would have been easily won by us.

“I’m hoping that they’ll be fresh after the New Year. It’s just four days practice before the next game and I’m hoping that we can do better than what we did against the Volcanoes.”

The TT Cricket Board (TTCB) is looking at reverting the National League to a three-day competition. And Williams expects that change, from the current two-day format, to be advantageous to the TT batsmen.

“I’ll welcome the three-day competition in (the) Premier One,” Williams said. “It will bring much difference for the batsmen. They can actually sit down and bat. It’s an incentive for the batsmen so they can bat a bit longer than normal.

“We would be playing four-day cricket (at the regional level) so we can look at that as also a way to select players when other players are failing. The last season, we had to select players based on practising in the nets and that didn’t go down well,” he said