Vin­ode Mam­chan

In dire need of a lift af­ter their first round loss to Bar­ba­dos in the open­ing match of the Nagi­co Su­per50 se­ries, T&T's Red Force will re­ceive a ma­jor boost to­day with the ar­rival of mys­tery spin­ner Sunil Nar­ine.

The wily Nar­ine missed the first match as he was fly­ing in from South Africa where he rep­re­sent­ed the Cape Co­bras in their do­mes­tic T20 tour­na­ment.

While the na­tion­al play­ers go through their fi­nal drill this morn­ing for the match against the Lee­wards in To­ba­go to­mor­row, Nar­ine will head straight in­to the game with­out any prac­tice. It is a chance T&T will have to take be­cause they need to de­feat the Lee­wards and Com­bined Cam­pus­es and Col­leges (CCC) to qual­i­fy for the se­mi-fi­nals.

Nar­ine, cur­rent­ly ranked among the top three spin­ners in the world in the short­er ver­sion of the game, was con­spic­u­ous by his ab­sence in T&T's less than im­pres­sive bowl­ing per­for­mance against the Ba­jans on Sun­day.

A cen­tu­ry from Jonathon Carter and a blitzy 83 from West In­dies play­er Dwayne Smith paved the way for a sub­stan­tial Bar­ba­dos score of 269 which the home team nev­er se­ri­ous­ly threat­ened.

Team man­ag­er Manohar Ram­saran said yes­ter­day Nar­ine's pres­ence will cer­tain­ly add depth to T&T's at­tack.

He not­ed that the team mem­bers fell down in all de­part­ments in their open­ing game.

"Our bowlers were caught off guard when the Ba­jan bats­men came hard at them ear­ly on. The field­ing was al­so not of the best as the play­ers dropped some catch­es and the bat­ting was a far cry from what we have come to ex­pect from the team. So all in all, we fell down in every de­part­ment and the play­ers will be look­ing for an im­me­di­ate turn­around."

Ram­saran, who re­cent­ly took over as man­ag­er of the team from Omar Khan, added: "We had a very good meet­ing af­ter the match. The play­ers were very qui­et in the dress­ing room at first be­cause they were very dis­ap­point­ed. How­ev­er, we were able to keep a very good meet­ing af­ter­wards and the se­nior men spoke on the way for­ward."

T&T will meet the Lee­wards at Shaw Park in To­ba­go to­mor­row and chair­man of the na­tion­al or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee Az­im Bas­sarath says that every­thing is on spot for the game and the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) is hop­ing for a full house.

Fol­low­ing this game there will be a clash be­tween CCC and Bar­ba­dos on Thurs­day, al­so at Shaw Park.