Vin­ode Mam­chan

Na­tion­al cap­tain Dwayne Bra­vo says that it does not mat­ter which team shows up to play T&T in the semi­fi­nals of the Nagi­co Su­per50 se­ries. "That team is guar­an­teed a tough game".

T&T qual­i­fied for the semis af­ter they whipped the Com­bined Cam­pus­es and Col­leges (CCC) by sev­en wick­ets in their fi­nal pre­lim­i­nary round clash on Sun­day, af­ter bounc­ing back from a first match loss to Bar­ba­dos. T&T's Red Force al­so blew the Lee­ward Is­lands on the way to the semi­fi­nals.

T&T will meet Group A win­ners ja­maica in the first semi­fi­nal to­mor­row af­ter Bar­ba­dos de­feat­ed the Lee­wards by four wick­ets and earned a bonus point to fin­ish top of Group B. They will meet Group A run­ners up Guyana in the sec­ond semi­fi­nal on Thurs­day.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day, Bra­vo said he did not have a pref­er­ence as to which team T&T would like to meet. "It does not mat­ter who we play in the se­mi-fi­nals. Ja­maica and Guyana are two good teams and any one of them will be tough. If you want to win the tour­na­ment, you have to beat every­body."

The all rounder who snared 3/19 against the CCC added that his team will reach the fi­nals if the play­ers ful­filled their po­ten­tial. "We need to play good crick­et and play to our true po­ten­tial. If we did that, we will win the game."

Bra­vo touched on the trou­bles be­ing faced by bats­man Adri­an Barath say­ing that the right han­der has the full sup­port of the team. Barath has failed to live up to ex­pec­ta­tions and made just one against the stu­dents on Sun­day, de­spite be­ing un­der no pres­sure.

"We are go­ing to give him that en­cour­age­ment and sup­port. He has been one of our bet­ter per­form­ers in the years gone by and is cur­rent­ly go­ing through a bad patch...For the mo­ment we are just let­ting him en­joy his crick­et while he puts his game to­geth­er."

Mys­tery spin­ner Sunil Nar­ine echoed his cap­tain's com­ments say­ing that their op­po­nents in the semi­fi­nals did not mat­ter. "We don't have a choice but who­ev­er it is, we will look to take care of them. We need to go out and fo­cus on what we have to do and who plays bet­ter on the day would win."

Nar­ine said his bowl­ing is get­ting back to where he wants it. "I have had a tough few months but my bowl­ing is com­ing back and I am hap­py with that."

Nar­ine bowled bril­liant­ly against the CCC to end with fig­ures of 10-2-14-1 as they were bowled out for 98.

He said: "They were look­ing to block me out but at the same time, it was cre­at­ing pres­sure at the oth­er end and they had to take chances and the wick­ets were falling on the oth­er end. If I can bowl like this and the wick­ets fall at the oth­er end and T&T wins, then I am hap­py and will take that."