U-17 cricketers focused on 2019 campaign

COACH of the TT Under-17 cricket team Gregory Davis said the team is not dwelling on last year's disappointment, saying this is a new team and is confident this year's team has the potential to deliver a strong performance.

The Cricket West Indies Regional Under-17 50-over tournament bowls off on Saturday in Trinidad with matches being played in central and south. TT will play Guyana in round one at the National Cricket Centre in Couva.

TT finished agonisingly short of winning the 2018 Under-17 50-over title, as Barbados captured the crown by .1 of a point.

Barbados ended the tournament with 20.6 points and TT finished second with 20.5 points, as the former earned more fast bowling points getting 16 fast bowling wickets compared to TT’s 15. Each wicket taken by a fast bowler earns his team .1 of a point.

Davis will have Rayad Emrit to count on for support, as the TT cricketer is the team's manager.

Talking about finishing second last year Davis said, "You put that in the past. This is a completely different team. A lot of the senior players from that team have gone up to the Under-19, so that is a completely different team to this team."

There are four or five players returning from last year's team including this year's captain Tariq Mohammed.

The team has been training for the past month and Davis said it is just about delivering in matches now. "I could have done with a few more practice games, but we had some good practices so far and the boys have to go out there and perform basically at this stage."

Davis, who was also the coach last year, says the team is a balanced one. "I think the bowling is a little stronger than the batting, not that the batting is weak with fellas like Tariq on it, as well as Rajeev Ramnath has been batting very well. We have some nice batsmen who could do the job as well and we have batting pretty deep, but I am hoping the bowling will keep down the runs and therefore allowing the batting to chase those scores."

The TT coach said Emrit will be valuable to the team. Discussing Emrit's role Davis said, "Of course primarily he is the manager of the team, but having Emrit around as a recent top class player it is always motivation to have him around and giving the boys some advice and so on."

The TT youth cricket teams have been in winning form this year, as both the national Under-15 boys and Under-19 girls teams won their respective tournaments earlier this year. The Under-17 team wants to continue that excellent form.

"Of course that is always the intention, to go there and do as best as we can and hopefully with that win the title."

TT SQUAD

Tariq Mohammed (captain), Darren Samlal, Shiva Sankar, Anderson Mahase, Rajeev Ramnath, Matthew Gittens, Jeremiah Cruickshank, Kyle Roopchand, Sion Hackett, Vasant Singh, Andrew Rambaran, Chadeon Raymond, Isaiah Gomez, Aaron Bankay, Gregory Davis (coach), Rayad Emrit (manager)