Trinidad and To­ba­go coach David Williams says the coun­try's tri­umph's in last month's Caribbean Twen­ty20 has served as a huge fil­lip ahead of the Re­gion­al first class sea­son which opens lat­er this week.

The Trinida­di­ans cap­tured their third CT20 crown when they crushed Guyana in the fi­nal two weeks ago at the Beause­jour Crick­et Ground in St Lu­cia.

And while they will have more time to pre­pare af­ter draw­ing a bye for the open­ing round of match­es, Williams said his play­ers were read­ing to do bat­tle in the three-month long sea­son.

"Once you are win­ning tour­na­ments, this al­ways breeds con­fi­dence," Williams said.

"The play­ers we have are ex­pe­ri­enced enough to make the tran­si­tion and know what's re­quired to win in the longer ver­sions of the game, so we are hop­ing to win both tour­na­ments."

He con­tin­ued: "The weath­er held and we have had three good tri­al match­es. The bats­men have been scor­ing heav­i­ly and the bowlers have been get­ting wick­ets.

"I think we are head­ing in the right di­rec­tion and I am sat­is­fied with the way prepa­ra­tions have un­fold­ed so far. The com­pe­ti­tion for places has been great and this should help to make our team strong."

Trinidad's se­lec­tors have named a strong squad for their open­ing en­counter against Wind­ward Is­lands at Arnos Vale in St Vin­cent from Feb­ru­ary 15-18.

The side will be led by De­nesh Ramdin and in­cludes fel­low West In­dies play­ers Lendl Sim­mons and Ravi Ram­paul.

How­ev­er, they are ex­pect­ed to lose most of their se­nior play­ers to West In­dies du­ty at some stage dur­ing the tour­na­ment, with Zim­bab­we ar­riv­ing in the Caribbean lat­er this month for a Test and lim­it­ed overs se­ries.

Williams, a for­mer Test wick­et­keep­er, said he ex­pect­ed strong com­pe­ti­tion for places in the squad.

"We have some play­ers that have per­formed very, very well in the tri­als and there are a few se­nior play­ers around, and we ex­pect some of our in­ter­na­tion­al stars to be avail­able dur­ing the sea­son, so it will be a huge bat­tle for places in the side and we are hop­ing to put our best team on the park," he not­ed.

"This is very im­por­tant for us and our de­vel­op­ment." (CMC)