T&T will go in­to their sec­ond round re­gion­al first class crick­et clash against the Lee­wards this morn­ing, miss­ing eight of their top play­ers.How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to man­ag­er of the team Omar Khan, this would present a won­der­ful op­por­tu­ni­ty for young play­ers to come to the fore and stake a claim for reg­u­lar places on the team.

Miss­ing from the na­tion­al team are Dar­ren Bra­vo, Dwayne Bra­vo, Lendl Sim­mons, skip­per De­nesh Ramdin, Sunil Nar­ine, Shan­non Gabriel and Kieron Pol­lard all on West In­dies du­ty, while Ja­son Mo­hammed has re­turned home with a ham­string in­jury.

Khan said: "We are se­ri­ous­ly af­fect­ed by the loss of our top play­ers but we have to look at the pos­i­tives and this presents a won­der­ful op­por­tu­ni­ty for young play­ers like Kjorn Ot­t­ley, Yan­nick Ot­t­ley, Yan­nic Cari­ah, Evin Lewis and Stephen Kat­wa­roo to make a name for them­selves.

"I am very ex­cit­ed at the prospect of see­ing these guys bat­tle out there and see­ing how they will han­dle the pres­sure. I am con­fi­dent in their abil­i­ties as they have shown in the past that they are ca­pa­ble of good per­for­mances.

"The dif­fer­ence this time around is that they would not have as many ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers around them to guide them." Khan said it was good to see Justin Guillen get­ting among the runs while it was time for Adri­an Barath to come out of his slump.

"It is good to see Guillen get some runs, he played very well in the 50-over game and we are look­ing for more runs from him in the four-day game. Barath has been strug­gling for far too long and it is time he goes out there and shows his ob­vi­ous class," he said.

"In the bowl­ing, Ravi Ram­paul is fine af­ter miss­ing the last game to rest an in­jured groin and he will lead the at­tack."We have some ex­pe­ri­ence as well in the spin de­part­ment, so we should be okay in that de­part­ment."

The Lee­wards have been on the im­prove dur­ing the last few games and they will be look­ing to con­tin­ue their up­ward climb. They have not been too af­fect­ed by de­fec­tions to the West In­dies team–los­ing on­ly Kier­an Pow­ell. Their ex­pe­ri­enced wick­et­keep­er/bats­man De­von Thomas is in the team and they will be look­ing to him to lead from the front.

Play gets un­der­way at 10 am.

Teams

T&T: Rayad Em­rit (cap­tain), Adri­an Barath, Evin Lewis, Justin Guillen, Yan­nick Ot­t­ley, Kjorn Ot­t­ley, Yan­nic Cari­ah, Ravi Ram­paul, Amit Jag­ger­nauth, Kavesh Kan­tas­ingh, Im­ran Khan, Teshawn Cas­tro, Steven Kat­wa­roo (wick­et­keep­er).

Lee­wards: Sylvester Joseph (Cap­tain), Justin Athanaze, Shane Bur­ton, Rah­keem Corn­wall, Jah­mar Hamil­ton, Ches­ney Hugh­es, Javia Liburd, An­tho­ny Mar­tin, Lyn­del Richard­son, Garvin Tonge, De­von Thomas, Kel­bert Wal­ters and Toni­to Wil­lett.

Lat­est stand­ings

Teams Mat Won Lost Tied Draw Aban Pts

Wind­ward Is 2 2 0 0 0 0 24

Bar­ba­dos 2 1 1 0 0 0 12

Ja­maica 1 1 0 0 0 0 12

Guyana 2 0 1 0 1 0 6

Lee­ward Is 1 0 0 0 1 0 3

Comb C&C 1 0 1 0 0 0 0

T&T 1 0 1 0 0 0 0