Vin­ode Mam­chan

A con­fi­dent Trinidad and To­ba­go will bat­tle Ja­maica in the first se­mi-fi­nal of the Nagi­co Re­gion­al Su­per50 tour­na­ment to­day from 2pm at the Queen's Park Oval.Yes­ter­day, mem­bers of the T&T team, af­fec­tion­ate­ly re­ferred to as the Red Force, were hard at work and man­ag­er of the team Manohar Ram­saran said the play­ers were ready for to­day's bat­tle.He said: "The boys have been work­ing very hard at their game and they have been very fo­cused on the task at hand."With­out sound­ing over con­fi­dent, Ram­saran said they were qui­et­ly op­ti­mistic, but more im­por­tant­ly, they were aware of their op­po­si­tion."The boys are qui­et­ly con­fi­dent go­ing in­to the match. How­ev­er, they are aware that the Ja­maicans are strong and they know that they have to be at the top of their game to ad­vance to the fi­nals," Ram­saran said.

Ram­saran not­ed that all the play­ers were all fit and there were no in­jury con­cerns. "This means that the se­lec­tors will have a full squad from which to choose."As to whether there will be changes, Ram­saran said that de­ci­sion would be made at the team meet­ing which was held last night.T&T reached the se­mi-fi­nals by fin­ish­ing sec­ond to Bar­ba­dos in group B. They lost one and won two of their pre­lim­i­nary round match­es, while the Ja­maicans topped Group A with three wins in their three match­es.T&T will hope that home con­di­tions work in their favour, as the pitch is ex­pect­ed to favour the slow­er bowlers. At the start of the tour­na­ment the pitch had more pace and bounce but with the dry weath­er cur­rent­ly be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced and the reg­u­lar use of the pitch, it has slowed down. Ram­saran said the pitch was look­ing good and he was hop­ing that it will play much bet­ter than in the last two match­es.

"The pitch is look­ing pret­ty good. They are us­ing the one to the east of the square and this was play­ing well all the time. We are hop­ing for a good pitch and for our bowlers to uti­lize it prop­er­ly."

An­oth­er fac­tor that may as­sist the lo­cals is the fact that a huge crowd is ex­pect­ed to show for the game. Checks with the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) tick­et of­fice re­vealed that 75 per cent of the tick­ets for the match have al­ready been sold, guar­an­tee­ing a good crowd.To­mor­row the sec­ond se­mi-fi­nals fea­tur­ing Bar­ba­dos and Guyana will be played at the same venue.

Teams

TRINIDAD & TO­BA­GO: Dwayne Bra­vo (cap­tain), Adri­an Barath, Evin Lewis, Lendl Sim­mons, Dar­ren Bra­vo, Ja­son Mo­hammed, De­nesh Ramdin (wick­et-keep­er), Rayad Em­rit, Sunil Nar­ine, Ravi Ram­paul, Im­ran Khan, Yan­nick Ot­t­ley, Shan­non Gabriel, Kevon Coop­er; Kelvin Williams (coach).

JA­MAICA: David Bernard Jr (cap­tain), Niki­ta Miller (vice cap­tain), An­dre Rus­sell, Carl­ton Baugh Jr (wick­et-keep­er), Tamar Lam­bert, An­drew Richard­son, Ho­race Miller, John Camp­bell, Jer­maine Black­wood, An­dre Mc­Carthy, Shel­don Cot­trell, Jerome Tay­lor, Nkrumah Bon­ner, Ke­nar Lewis; Ju­nior Ben­nett (coach).