Vin­ode Mam­chan

With three top play­ers leav­ing for Bangladesh af­ter this match, T&T will be look­ing to make best use of them and hope­ful­ly ob­tain full points against Com­bined Cam­pus­es and Col­leges (CCC) at the Three Ws Oval, Bar­ba­dos, when they open their Re­gion­al First Class cam­paign this af­ter­noon. Skip­per De­nesh Ramdin speak­ing af­ter the team's prac­tice ses­sion yes­ter­day said: "We are con­fi­dent of do­ing well against the Col­leges and we are look­ing for full points. We have tar­get­ed this team to get full points and if we can do that, it will be a re­al­ly good boost ear­ly in the sea­son. Af­ter this match we will be with­out the ser­vices of Dwayne Bra­vo, Ke­iron Pol­lard and Lendl Sim­mons. That a ma­jor chunk of the team there, so we need to max­imise the pres­ence of these guys this week­end. "We have a num­ber of re­al­ly good First Class play­ers in our team and al­though we have not won the re­gion­al First Class ti­tle for a while, we have al­ways been a ma­jor chal­lenger. "This time around we want to go all the way and win our sec­ond ti­tle for the sea­son. We have tar­get­ed all three re­gion­al ti­tles and we have one in the bag al­ready." T&T re­cent­ly won the Re­gion­al T20 cham­pi­onships, with a crush­ing win over Ja­maica in the fi­nals at Kens­ing­ton Oval.

In the past T&T has had prob­lems with the stu­dents and one of the men who led the fight against T&T was T&T-born left arm spin­ner Kavesh Kan­tas­ingh. How­ev­er, T&T will not have him to con­tend with, as the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) was in­formed he is now avail­able for se­lec­tion for his coun­try of birth. The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies St. Au­gus­tine in­formed the TTCB that in or­der for Kan­tas­ingh to not miss class­es for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od of three months, he will not be cho­sen to play for the CCC. How­ev­er, the let­ter in­di­cat­ed that he is now avail­able to play for T&T for the rest of the sea­son. Kan­tas­ingh is read­ing for a de­gree in en­gi­neer­ing at UWI, St. Au­gus­tine. Mean­while, to­day's game will have spe­cial sig­nif­i­cance for some of the T&T play­ers be­cause it will mark the first time that they play with the pink ball. The match will be played un­der lights and the first ball will be bowled at 3.30 PM. The oth­er match­es this week­end are day match­es. De­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Ja­maica will face Wind­ward Is­lands at Sabi­na Park. The Ja­maicans have won the ti­tle for the past four years and will be look­ing to make it five and atone for their de­feat at the hands of T&T in the T20 fi­nals. Trou­bled Guyana meets Lee­ward Is­lands at Wind­sor Park in Do­mini­ca. The Guyanese have been stripped for home match­es and will use Do­mini­ca as their 'home' for the du­ra­tion of this tour­na­ment. Bar­ba­dos have drawn a bye in the first round.

Squad

De­nesh Ramdin (cap­tain), Rayad Em­rit, Lendl Sim­mons, Kieron Pol­lard, Adri­an Barath, Sunil Nar­ine, Dwayne Bra­vo, Im­ran Khan, Dar­ren Bra­vo, Shan­non Gabriel, Ja­son Mo­hammed, At­i­ba Allert and Yan­nic Cari­ah. Omar Khan – Man­ag­er, Kelvin Williams – Coach, Oba Gul­ston – Physio and Ronald Rogers – Train­er.