Vin­ode Mam­chan

Lo­cal crick­et fans will be pleased to know that with all the new changes in the struc­ture of West In­dies crick­et and fran­chise crick­et com­ing on stream, their beloved Red Force will re­main in­tact at least for one tour­na­ment.Pres­i­dent of the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB), Az­im Bas­sarath said that the lim­it­ed overs as­pect re­mains as is and will not be played un­der the fran­chise sys­tem. The Red Force who dom­i­nat­ed re­gion­al T20 and lim­it­ed overs crick­et was dis-man­tled when the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) T20 tour­na­ment was for­malised. The Red Force was the toast of the re­gion in T20 crick­et, mak­ing four ap­pear­ances in the Cham­pi­ons League T20 tour­na­ment.

The team has now been spread across the re­gion for the CPL, to the ex­tent that three Red Force play­ers are cap­tain­ing dif­fer­ent teams in the com­pe­ti­tion. Dwayne Bra­vo cap­tains the T&T Red Steel, Ke­iron Pol­lard cap­tains the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents and De­nesh Ramdin is at the helm of the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors.Re­cent­ly the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) hired a new crick­et op­er­a­tions man­ag­er in Richard Py­bus and he made a 20-point pre­sen­ta­tion to the WICB ex­ec­u­tive - all of which were adopt­ed. The last point was mak­ing re­gion­al First Class crick­et fran­chised based and this means that the T&T se­nior crick­et team will have on­ly 10 play­ers from this coun­try on board.

The WICB has how­ev­er de­cid­ed to leave the ter­ri­to­ries in­tact for the Su­per50 tour­na­ment and this is where fans can en­joy the en­tire Red Force out­fit play­ing to­geth­er. As soon as Jan­u­ary next year fans will have a chance to see the Red Force play to­geth­er again, when they take part in the Nagi­co Su­per50, which will be played in T&T.Bas­sarath added that it is his board's in­ten­tions to keep the Red Force to­geth­er for T20 crick­et as well. "Un­der the guide­lines set out by CPL, there can be no T20 tour­na­ment in­volv­ing more than three teams in the Caribbean. We are owed some mon­ey by the SPORTT and it is our hope that once we can get the funds, then we would be able to host a tri-na­tion se­ries and play it every year, in­volv­ing our Red Force team. At dif­fer­ent times we can bring in dif­fer­ent Caribbean coun­tries to play, so that we play every­one and keep the Red Force T20 brand out there."