Star Queen's Park all-rounder Dwayne Bravo will be out of action today when his team makes a bid to win their fourth Sunday League title in a row playing against PowerGen in the finals of the tournament at UWI SPEC, St Augustine.
Bravo leaves this morning for India, where he will line up with the Chennai Super Kings in the Indian Premier League. Queen's Park is, however, still fortunate as it would have the service of other T20 specialists like Kieron Pollard and Sunil Narine. Also lining up with the Parkites today is left-handed West Indies middle order batsman Darren Bravo. Queen's Park has also lost three players to the national team that is flying out to Jamaica today. They are opener Adrian Barath, fast bowler Shannon Gabriel and off-spinner Amit Jaggernauth. Also out is all-rounder Kevon Cooper who was disqualified because he did not play in the prelims.
The Oval Boys will start as favourites to win the title as PowerGen will be without top players Denesh Ramdin and Kavesh Kantasingh (national duties), Ravi Rampaul (IPL) and Samuel Badree (disqualified because he did not play in the preliminaries).Manager of Queen's Park CC Jeffrey Guillen said yesterday that his players were guarding against overconfidence. "We have a good unit there but we are guarding against being too confident. Our players have to go out there and play really good cricket to come out on top and we are hoping to do just that.
PowerGen will still have in its ranks aggressive openers Evin Lewis and Nicholas Sookdeosingh, as well as the experienced Sherwin Ganga, skipper Gregory Mahabir and left-arm unorthodox spinner Dave Mohammed. Sookdeosingh and Lewis both scored centuries on the weekend against Bamboo Sports and had a double-century opening stand.The game was originally scheduled for tomorrow but due to increased ground rental fees the T&T Cricket Board (TTCB) decided to bring it a day forward. The authorities at UWI wanted to charge a rental fee of $45,000 for the ground tomorrow because they would have had extra expenses in bringing out workers Good Friday to clean the facility. As it stands the board had to pay $15,000 for the use of the facility for today. Action gets going at 2 pm.