Vin­ode Mam­chan

T&T's se­nior crick­et team will open their cam­paign in the Re­gion­al Su­per50 tour­na­ment against the Com­bined Cam­pus­es and Col­leges (CCC) on Feb­ru­ary 1, at the Queen's Park Oval, in Port-of-Spain.

A day ear­li­er, the tour­na­ment of­fi­cial­ly starts with a clash be­tween the Wind­ward Is­lands and Ja­maica al­so at the Queen's Park Oval. The tour­na­ment which is be­ing spon­sored by the Min­istry of Tourism here will be played over a two-week pe­ri­od with match­es in both Trinidad and To­ba­go. The eight teams, in­clud­ing Ire­land, have been split in­to two groups, with T&T play­ing in Group B along­side Bar­ba­dos, the Lee­wards and CCC. Group A com­pris­es Ja­maica, Ire­land, Guyana and the Wind­ward Is­lands.

Two match­es will al­so be played in To­ba­go and fans can look for­ward to ac­tion on Feb­ru­ary 5 and 6. On Feb­ru­ary 5, CCC, who was on­ly in­clud­ed this week af­ter the Unit­ed States failed to con­firm their par­tic­i­pa­tion, will op­pose the Lee­ward Is­lands and on the next day, T&T will face Bar­ba­dos. Both match­es will be played at Shaw Park in To­ba­go and ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cials from the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB), the fa­cil­i­ty is up to "scratch" and ready to host re­gion­al crick­et once more.

Mean­while, the T&T team con­tin­ues their prepa­ra­tion this week at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre in Cou­va and will then take a break for the Christ­mas pe­ri­od. The TTCB is yet to con­firm whether there will be any North/South match­es for the fes­tive break, or whether they will be invit­ing any of the oth­er teams who are play­ing in the Su­per50 to come over ear­ly to play some warm-up games.

In­for­ma­tion com­ing to hand is that the Wind­ward Is­lands are hope­ful of com­ing across to T&T ear­ly in or­der to pre­pare the tour­na­ment. Re­cent­ly, the TTCB and the Wind­ward Is­lands Crick­et Board signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing which would see this coun­try as­sist the is­landers with their de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes and mar­ket­ing. The Wind­wards com­ing across ear­ly can well be part of that arrange­ment to as­sist with their de­vel­op­ment. The West In­dies Crick­et Board is ex­pect­ed to of­fi­cial­ly re­lease the fix­tures for the tour­na­ment lat­er this week.