Vin­ode Mam­chan

T&T open­ing bats­man Justin Guillen is look­ing to build on his im­pres­sive cen­tu­ry in the lo­cal tri­al match and force his way in­to the team for the up­com­ing Cham­pi­ons League in South Africa. Guillen, play­ing for the Ja­son Mo­hammed team slammed 114 not out off 72 balls with 14 fours and three six­es, to catch the eyes of the se­lec­tors, and was cho­sen for the Flori­da match­es against Ja­maica on Au­gust 10 and 11. Speak­ing to the Guardian yes­ter­day, the soft spo­ken left han­der said: "I am feel­ing good at the mo­ment with my bat­ting and that is im­por­tant go­ing in­to any tour­na­ment. We have two match­es against Ja­maica in Flori­da and I am look­ing to make the best out of it and build on my cur­rent mo­men­tum."

Guillen, who has been plagued by laps­es in con­cen­tra­tion af­ter get­ting good starts, is now con­fi­dent of get­ting past that men­tal bar­ri­er. "I would nor­mal­ly get in­to the 30s and 40s and af­ter do­ing all the hard work, I would just throw it away. How­ev­er, I have been do­ing some men­tal ex­er­cis­es and have been in con­stant con­ver­sa­tion with David Williams the tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor and I am see­ing a dif­fer­ence.

"Just re­flect­ing on the cen­tu­ry in the last in­nings there and it tells me that I can get over that ob­sta­cle."?Guillen has been in good form dur­ing the tri­als and topped it off with that un­beat­en cen­tu­ry. "He has been tout­ed long ago as a fu­ture leader of this na­tion's crick­et team and he will be look­ing to ce­ment his place on the team to make con­di­tions right, to take on the man­tle of lead­er­ship some day.

"I am just try­ing to work as hard as I can and con­trol the things that I can do. I am re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to get­ting more con­sis­tent scores and then tak­ing it step by step from that point." This year, Guillen be­came the most suc­cess­ful cap­tain in the his­to­ry of the il­lus­tri­ous Queen's Park Crick­et Club, when led them to a sec­ond tre­ble suc­cess on the do­mes­tic scene. Man­ag­er of the team Omar Khan said every­one knows of Justin's abil­i­ty and he is look­ing for­ward to great things from the Parkite. "Justin has the po­ten­tial, we all know of his tremen­dous abil­i­ty and he just needs to be con­sis­tent and he would get to where he wants. "He needs to be more care­ful with his shot se­lec­tion and he will get the kind of scores he got in the tri­als. He is a West In­dies 'A' team play­er and has im­pressed the na­tion­al se­lec­tors who wants him on the side. We are look­ing for­ward to great things from him."