Fresh from the disappointment of being beaten in the finals of the regional first class season, the national senior team players will be hoping for places on a Caribbean Premier League (CPL) franchise, while the administrators will meet and plan a way forward for the national outfit.
First vice-president of the T&T Cricket Board (TTCB) Dudnath Ramkessoon said that the board will first meet with the project team that oversaw the national team preparations for the past season. "We are going to have a de-briefing session with the project team, firstly, before we engage others in talks surrounding the national cricket team."We continue to struggle in the longer format of the game and while we have dominated and constructed a great brand in the T20 format, we need to get success all around. With the Caribbean Premier League taking away the national teams from the T20 version, we now have more time and energy to focus on the longer format of the game.
"Normally, after the regional season ends we go into preparation mode for the T20 tournament which is played first in January. Now, we have for the last time to prepare our national team for Champions League and after that we would have the time to focus on the longer format."The first regional competition will now be the first class tournament and we have more time to get our players ready from after October period. We have a number of trial matches to select the team and the players would have enough time to get themselves in the best shape possible.
"We have had success in the Super50 series and we are going to continue to build on this but we need urgent attention to the first class side. Looking at the team, we have very capable players yet we have not gotten the results we would have liked. "So far, the board has agreed that attention needs to be paid to the mental aspect of the game for our players and we are going to work closely with the Sport Company to have officials trained in that area to work with our team on a regular basis."Ramkessoon added that the TTCB is not going to take any chances and will look to have sports psychologists work with the age-group national teams. "We want to start giving them the best preparation for their careers from a young age and we are going to have sports psychognosis work with them fromvery young."