Vin­ode Mam­chan

T&T's de­par­ture from the Kar­bonn Smart 2012 Cham­pi­ons League T20 tour­na­ment in South Africa has left many of­fi­cials and fans in South Africa dis­ap­point­ed. This was the gen­er­al view dur­ing the of­fi­cial open­ing of the tour­na­ment at Mel­rose Place in Jo­han­nes­burg on Fri­day night. Of­fi­cials from CLT20 shared the view that T&T had brought much to the tour­na­ment in terms of flair and ex­cite­ment over the last two Cham­pi­ons League in which they played and not hav­ing them around this time in the main draw leaves the tour­na­ment all the poor­er for it. Even fans from South Africa ap­proached of­fi­cials from the T&T Crick­et Board who were on hand at the func­tion telling them that they are sor­ry that T&T will not be in­volved.

In re­sponse to this man­ag­er of the T&T team Omar Khan who was at the func­tion said, "We have been hear­ing all night that the tour­na­ment would have been much bet­ter with T&T, but at the end of the day we have lost and must now start to pre­pare for the re­gion­al tour­na­ment which is the route to Cham­pi­ons League. "We are dis­ap­point­ed that the guys did not make it and we would have a de-brief­ing ses­sion with the TTCB when we go back home. We al­so have to sub­mit re­ports to the board, they will get my re­port as man­ag­er, as well as the cap­tain's re­port and the coach­es re­port."

With the next as­sign­ment for the na­tion­al team be­ing the Re­gion­al T20 se­ries in T&T and St Lu­cia, the man­age­ment team will meet with the board to fi­nalise a pro­gramme that would lead to a suc­cess­ful de­fence of the re­gion­al ti­tle.

The West In­dies play­ers on the na­tion­al team will be miss­ing out on the ear­ly prepa­ra­tions as they would be in­volved in a se­ries in Bangladesh in ear­ly No­vem­ber. At the end of Oc­to­ber they will go to a train­ing and fit­ness camp in Bar­ba­dos. Mean­while, half of the team left Jo­han­nes­burg on Fri­day for T&T. Those mak­ing the trip on Fri­day were skip­per De­nesh Ramdin, Samuel Badree, Lendl Sim­mons, Ravi Ram­paul, Dar­ren Bra­vo, Kevon Coop­er, Rayad Em­rit, Adri­an Barath, Shan­non Gabriel and coach­es David and Kelvin Williams.