The Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board (T&TCB) has hailed the ex­ploits of the na­tion­al team and es­pe­cial­ly mys­tery spin­ner Sunil Nar­ine fol­low­ing T&T's con­vinc­ing vic­to­ry in the open­ing match of the 2012 West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) four-day tour­na­ment on Sun­day in Bar­ba­dos. T&T de­feat­ed the Com­bined Cam­pus­es and Col­leges by 172-runs in three days as Nar­ine dom­i­nat­ed the op­pos­ing bats­men for a match haul of an amaz­ing 13 wick­ets for 39 runs in on­ly 30.1 overs. The CCC ca­pit­u­lat­ed in a fu­tile run chase in a rain-marred match played as a day-night fix­ture at Cave Hill in Bar­ba­dos. In the first in­nings, the 23-year-old right-arm spin­ner cap­tured five for 22 in 16 overs but went bet­ter when the CCC bat­ted again to claim eight for 17 in 14.1 overs in on­ly his third First Class match for T&T. On Mon­day, Az­im Bas­sarath, pres­i­dent of the T&TCB de­scribed Nar­ine's per­for­mance as "phe­nom­e­nal" and a sign of what is in store in the 2012 sea­son for the na­tion­al team aim­ing to re­gain the R4DT which has elud­ed them for sev­er­al years. "Nar­ine's bowl­ing is noth­ing short of phe­nom­e­nal as he grows from strength to strength show­ing that his ver­sa­til­i­ty spans the many for­mats of the game. "The en­tire per­for­mance of the T&T team is com­mend­able and we look for­ward to con­sis­tent­ly top class per­for­mances from this team over the sea­son," said Bas­sarath.

On Sat­ur­day Nar­ine stunned the crick­et world when he was bought by the IPL fran­chise Kolko­ta Knight Rid­ers for US$700,000 com­ing on the heels of su­perb per­for­mances with the bat at ball at the 2012 Caribbean T20 Cham­pi­onships which T&T won last month in Bar­ba­dos. Bas­sarath said that the T&TCB was ex­treme­ly proud to count Nar­ine as a prod­uct of their age-group de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes. The T&T crick­et chief point­ed out that at least nine T&T crick­eters had signed up for the IPL. Auc­tion and among those who were in con­tention to land lu­cra­tive con­tracts in the 2012 sea­son were fast bowler Ravi Ram­paul, open­ing bats­man Lendl Sim­mons and Adri­an Barath, for­mer na­tion­al cap­tain Daren Gan­ga, cur­rent cap­tain/wick­et­keep­er De­nesh Ram­sin and T20 spe­cial­ist spin­ner Samuel Badree.