T&T at full strength for Guyana clash

Trinidad and Tobago will have the services of all their West Indies stars, when they oppose Guyana tomorrow at the Queen’s Park Oval in their third round regional cricket clash.

The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) has mandated all West Indies players to play in the third round if they are interested in being selected for the Test series against Zimbabwe which gets underway next Tuesday at Kensington Oval in Barbados. 

Manager of the T&T team Omar Khan said yesterday that all players have indicated their willingness to play and will be available.

The players indicating that they want to play are Dwayne Bravo, skipper Denesh Ramdin, Darren Bravo, Sunil Narine, Samuel Badree, Shannon Gabriel, Lendl Simmons and Keiron Pollard. 

T&T are currently fourth in the standings after winning their second round clash against the Leewards on the weekend in St Kitts. They lost their opening match to the Windwards in St Vincent.

Khan welcomed the return of the stars: “We are happy to have the guys back but before the tournament started we knew that we will have to deal with players being in and out of the team at different times. 

“We are happy to have the guys, I am sure Guyana will have their Test players as well and it will make for a great battle at the Oval. The team although losing the first match, played wonderfully well to win the second game and I must congratulate the young players on the squad who have really come good when required. 

“Yannic Cariah is showing that he is developing into a special talent, while Yannick Ottley in his debut game against the Leewards was very good and showed that he belonged at that level.

“Also on debut in the last round was Stephen Katwaroo and he batted well in both innings, showed great maturity and is definitely one of the future.”

The Guyanese team arrived in T&T on Sunday and took in a practice session at the Oval yesterday. Today, the national team will assemble and put in their final preparations for the match.