Six T&T play­ers, in­clud­ing wick­et-keep­er De­nesh Ramdin, have been se­lect­ed in the West In­dies squad for their short tour of Bangladesh in No­vem­ber, ac­cord­ing to team man­ag­er Omar Khan. At a farewell func­tion for the T&T team which head­ed off to the IPL se­ries in In­dia on Mon­day, Khan an­nounced that open­ing bats­men Adri­an Barath and Lendl Sim­mons, left-hand­ed stroke-play­er Daren Bra­vo, wick­et­keep­er De­nesh Ramdin, big-hit­ter Kieron Pol­lard and fast bowler Ravi Ram­paul have all been re­ward­ed by the re­gion­al se­lec­tors for out­stand­ing, con­sis­tent per­for­mances.

The T&TEC chair­man said the list of tal­ent­ed T&T play­ers knock­ing hard on the door of re­gion­al se­lec­tion does not end there point­ing out that Dwayne Bra­vo and Rayad Em­rit would have al­so fea­tured high which was a tes­ta­ment to the depth and qual­i­ty of lo­cal crick­et. Khan be­gan his ad­dress by thank­ing pres­i­dent of the T&T Crick­et Board for his per­son­al in­ter­est in en­sur­ing that the na­tion­al crick­eters ben­e­fit­ted from all avail­able re­sources at their dis­pos­al to pre­pare them­selves for the 2011 Cham­pi­ons league T20. He said plan­ning for the tour­na­ment start­ed ear­li­er this year when T&T won the Caribbean T20 Cham­pi­onships in Bar­ba­dos and he was con­fi­dent that every­thing was done to en­sure that the crick­eters were suit­ably pre­pared for the chal­lenge ahead.

Khan al­so ex­pressed his ap­pre­ci­a­tion to the Min­istry of Sport for pro­vid­ing fi­nan­cial sup­port to the team and for the gifts of equip­ment, Oak­ley sun­shades and IPads to mem­bers of the tour­ing par­ty at a func­tion host­ed by Min­is­ter Anil Roberts on Mon­day at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo. "I can as­sure you that every­thing will be put to good use. The Trinidad and To­ba­go T20 team has built a great rep­u­ta­tion in In­dia and will be look­ing to en­hance it when we play first in the qual­i­fy­ing tour­na­ment against Ruhu­na Rhi­nos (Sep­tem­ber 19) of Sri Lan­ka and Leices­ter­shire of Eng­land (Sep­tem­ber 20) in Hy­der­abad," said Khan.

He said the T&T team, which left for In­dia yes­ter­day was al­so ex­pect­ed to play one warm-up match against Kolko­ta Knight Rid­ers be­fore the qual­i­fy­ing match­es. Khan said the T&T team had a pen­chant for lift­ing their game in T20 com­pe­ti­tions pos­si­bly be­cause the fi­nan­cial re­wards are huge but he said their self-be­lief al­so played a sig­nif­i­cant part in their suc­cess against more fan­cied op­po­nents.

"The na­tion­al crick­eters are proud to rep­re­sent Trinidad and To­ba­go and are very good am­bas­sadors. They con­duct them­selves very well and this makes the job of the man­ag­er very easy," said Khan. He said strict rules ap­ply to the team on tour and that any­one found in breach of the es­tab­lished stan­dard will face stern disclip­inary ac­tion such as fines and strong cen­sure.

Khan praised the T&T Crick­et Board for sus­tain­ing their de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes which he said are bear­ing rich fruit as ev­i­denced by their re­gion­al T20 suc­cess; qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the 2011 Nokia Cham­pi­ons League T20; and the se­lec­tion of the six WI play­ers on the WI squad to play in Bangladesh.

He said quite apart from the WI se­lectees there are sev­er­al oth­er T&T play­ers who can hold their own at the high­est lev­el of the game and will be count­ed up­on to take their team to great achieve­ments in In­dia.

Among them he said were leg spin­ner Dave "Tad­pole" Mo­hammed, mid­dle-or­der bats­man Ja­son Mo­hammed; and the young tal­ent­ed duo of Sunil Nar­ine (spin­ner) and Kevon Coop­er (medi­um pace).

The 2011 Nokia Cham­pi­ons League T20 tour­na­ment bowls off with a qual­i­fy­ing tour­na­ment on Mon­day.