GROS ISLET–The Re­gion­al Four Day Tour­na­ment is set to bowl off this morn­ing with three match­es be­ing played around the Caribbean.At Gros Islet, the Wind­ward Is­lands host the Com­bined Cam­pus­es & Col­leges (CCC), in Bridgetown, Ja­maica and Bar­ba­dos meet again, while the high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed de­but of Guyana's Tage­nar­ine Chan­der­paul, West In­dies Test bats­man, Shiv Chan­der­paul's son, against the Lee­ward Is­lands is at North Sound.

On­ly on Thurs­day, the Re­gion­al Su­per50 com­pe­ti­tion start­ed with all six teams fac­ing each oth­er. T&T drew a first round bye and will open their do­mes­tic sea­son against the Wind­wards in St Vin­cent in round two. The lat­ter had to over­come a late on­slaught from CCC on Thurs­day night to creep home by one wick­et. It took a 25-run last wick­et stand for the home team to open their cam­paign with a far from con­vinc­ing win.

But this shod­dy per­for­mance hasn't de­terred the Wind­ward play­ers. Head coach, Ian Allen, re­mains adamant the win­ning part of the per­for­mance would stand his side in good stead. He said, "I think it should have a pos­i­tive im­pact. The main fact cause we won the game. Had we not won the game, it would prob­a­bly be on the op­po­site side." Allen is con­cerned with his mid­dle or­der bat­ting. Be­sides Fletch­er (67), De­von Smith (54) and Shane Shilling­ford (21), the next clos­est score to 20 were the CCC ex­tras.

With Miles Bas­combe leav­ing the 4-day squad, Allen will as­sess con­di­tions at Beause­jour this morn­ing, and de­cide whether he wants to play an ex­tra bats­man. But his headache may have just be­gun. Cap­tain Liam Se­bastien ar­rived in St Lu­cia with the flu and it got so bad on Thurs­day night dur­ing the CCC match, he was forced to de­lay his ar­rival at the crease. He had a light train­ing ses­sion yes­ter­day morn­ing but he will face a late med­ical test this morn­ing. Lyn­don James will stand in as cap­tain should Se­bastien be ill.

Af­ter Thurs­day night's scare, the Wind­wards will feel they will need all the ar­mour they have for a spir­it­ed CCC team. De­spite on­ly win­ning one game for the year, the stu­dents have been very com­pet­i­tive. Allen al­so recog­nis­es this, "I think that they have im­proved. They have some play­ers that can give a lot of teams trou­ble. Some oth­er play­ers that are match win­ners as well. We nev­er take them light­ly com­ing in­to this for­mat of the game be­cause we know what they can do against any op­po­si­tion, hence the rea­son why we go out an play as hard as pos­si­ble."

Be­fore both teams meet to­mor­row though, they met in the lunch room of Har­mo­ny Suites. The Wind­wards had just come back from train­ing and the CCC were just head­ing out. The at­mos­phere was friend­ly, but Floyd Reifer, coach of the stu­dents, was still dis­ap­point­ed that his team weren't able to grind out a re­sult on Thurs­day night. Af­ter forc­ing a Wind­wards col­lapse from a po­si­tion of 112/2 to 186/9, Reifer was dis­ap­point­ed his boys couldn't put in the fi­nal nail. He said, "Fin­ish­ing off games is some­thing we got to keep work­ing on. As we go deep­er in­to the com­pe­ti­tion, guys will get more ex­pe­ri­ence and hope­ful­ly we'll have that killer in­stinct to fin­ish off games."

For the mean­time though, the key word for the CCC is to be "com­pet­i­tive." They've suc­cess­ful­ly done that so far they year and their coach wants them to keep be­ing com­pet­i­tive. "Our main aim is to re­al­ly com­pete. Once we com­pete and give a good ac­count of our­selves, guys are im­prov­ing an de­vel­op­ing their per­for­mances, then I'm hap­py with that," Reifer said.

The stand out play­ers since the CT20 has been Chad­wick Wal­ton and Ray­mon Reifer. Both notched up half cen­turies against the Wind­wards in the open­ing Su­per50 match and Reifer wants them to score more con­sis­tent­ly and change those half cen­turies in­to cen­turies. Like the Wind­wards, there isn't any ma­jor shift in the core of the CCC squad for the 4-day tour­na­ment, Nicholas Alex­is and Mar­ques Clarke make way for Kesrick Williams and An­tho­ny Al­leyne.

Play in all three match­es starts at 10 am (T&T Time). (Cour­tesy WICB web sites)

Squads:

GUYANA: Veerasam­my Per­maul (cap­tain), Christo­pher Barn­well, Rons­ford Beat­on, De­ven­dra Bishoo, Tage­nar­ine Chan­der­paul, Ra­jen­dra Chan­dri­ka, Der­win Chris­t­ian, As­sad Fu­dadin, Steven Ja­cobs, Leon John­son, Keon Joseph, Amir Khan, Paul Wintz

BAR­BA­DOS: Kirk Ed­wards (cap­tain), Rashi­di Bouch­er, Kraigg Brath­waite, Jonathan Carter, Ros­ton Chase, Miguel Cum­mins, Shane Dowrich, Kyle Hope, Christo­pher Jor­dan, Ash­ley Nurse, Javon Sear­les, Kevin Stoute, Jomel War­ri­can

JA­MAICA: Tamar Lam­bert (cap­tain), Carl­ton Baugh Jr, Dave Bernard Jr, Jer­maine Black­wood, Nkrumah Bon­ner, Odean Brown, Shel­don Cot­ter­rell, Zeniffe Fowler, Si­mon Jack­son, Xavier Mar­shall, Jamie Mer­chant, Niki­ta Miller, An­drew Richard­son

LEE­WARD IS­LANDS: Sylvester Joseph (cap­tain), Li­onel Bak­er, Quin­ton Boatswain, Jah­mar Hamil­ton, Montcin Hodge, Lar­ry Joseph, Javier Liburd, Steve Liburd, An­tho­ny Mar­tin, Or­lan­do Pe­ters, Austin Richards Jr, Gavin Tonge, Toni­to Wil­lett

WIND­WARD IS­LANDS: Liam Se­bastien (cap­tain), An­dre Fletch­er, Don­well Hec­tor, Lin­don James, De­lorn John­son, Ked­dy Lesporis, Garey Math­urin, Nelon Pas­cal, Ken­roy Pe­ters, Dal­ton Polius, Shane Shilling­ford, De­von Smith, Ty­ronne Theophile

COM­BINED CAM­PUS­ES & COL­LEGES: Kyle Corbin (cap­tain), An­tho­ny Al­leyne, Ryan Austin, Derone Davis, Ja­son Dawes, Akeem De­war, Kevin Mc­Clean, Nekoli Par­ris, Sha­caya Thomas, Floyd Reifer, Ray­mon Reifer, Chad­wick Wal­ton, Kesrick Williams