Ramdin: Bitter season to swallow

Captain of the losing T&T cricket team Denesh Ramdin says the past season was a bitter one to swallow with all the inconsistent performances. Speaking after his team lost the finals of the Regional First Class tournament to Barbados by an innings and 22 runs yesterday at Kensington Oval, in Barbados, Ramdin said: “It is a bitter season to swallow. We have some good performances but yet we had some poor ones and as well and you try to be consistent which we didn’t achieve. We had a lot of chopping and changing throughout the season and this did not help as we lost players at different times.

“Having said that we need our players to focus on their game and try harder at what they do. The guys this season have been trying to get all the runs in one session and it does not work like that. You need to bat two and a half sessions to score a hundred but our players have been trying to do it in one session and in the process lose their wickets to careless strokes. “We need to go back to the drawing board and re-work our game if we want to be more successful in the future. In this game gone by, there were very few positives but I must give praise to Lendl Simmons who scored a wonderful hundred. Also young Stephen Katwaroo batted well and Akeal Hosein looked the part.”

Ramdin said the format of domestic cricket in Trinidad has nothing to do with the team’s poor performances. “I don’t think the format has anything to do with the way our guys bat. They just have to build an innings and not rush it. They have to understand what is required to be successful and start putting these things into practice.” Ramdin added that the toss proved crucial to the result of the finals. “The toss was important to win. We lost the toss and they sent us in to bat on a pitch with grass and moisture. They did not think we could have beaten Jamaica so they hastily put together a pitch here for the game. Kirk Edwards is saying that the toss had nothing to do with it but I can tell you that if we had won the toss, we would have shut them out for a low score.”

Meanwhile, successful Barbadian skipper Edwards said that the key to his team’s success was their unity. “When one man didn’t get off another man would put his hands up and this worked for us this season. The unity of the team was the key to our success. We stuck together and stayed away from the media and this helped us a lot.”