Vin­ode Mam­chan

The T&T Red Force will be look­ing for an im­proved show­ing to­day, when they come up against the Lee­wards in their sec­ond match of the WICB Pro­fes­sion­al Crick­et League (PCL) at Warn­er Park in St Kitts.

Rayad Em­rit's men had an in­dif­fer­ent match in their open­ing game against Bar­ba­dos Pride at the Queen's Park Oval. They were out­played and got away with a draw be­cause of the rain which washed out most of the fi­nal day's play. Lee­wards trav­elled to Guyana and re­ceived a beat­ing by an an in­nings and ten runs at the Guyana Na­tion­al Sta­di­um.

Pri­or to the Red Force de­par­ture for St Kitts, Em­rit said his team was lucky to get away with the draw and was look­ing for­ward to a much im­proved per­for­mance. "We were lucky that the rain came down, God smiled on us but we need to put in an im­proved per­for­mance im­me­di­ate­ly. We are ca­pa­ble of do­ing a lot bet­ter than what we showed here."

Red Force will again be with­out the ser­vices of the ex­pe­ri­enced Ramnaresh Sar­wan. He has been re­placed by the hard hit­ting wick­et­keep­er bats­man Nicholas Pooran. Em­rit called im­prove­ment in the team's all round play.

"The young play­ers on the team are show­ing good abil­i­ty and we the se­niors need to come good and get the job done," he said.

The Lee­wards have been strug­gling for the last few years and T&T Red Force will start as favourites at the small Warn­er Park fa­cil­i­ty.

Rain may again play a part as the weath­er has not been great over the past few days and it is pre­dict­ed to con­tin­ue over the week­end.

The pitch is flat and good for bat­ting and with the short bound­aries the bats­men will be lin­ing up to take a knock. Red Force wick­et­keep­er/bats­man De­nesh Ramdin will have fond mem­o­ries of this ground, hav­ing struck 167 against Bangladesh in a lim­it­ed overs clash ear­li­er this sea­son.

In the oth­er two games to­day, Guyana Jaguars play Wind­wards Vol­ca­noes at the Guyana Na­tion­al Sta­di­um and Bar­ba­dos Pride bat­tle the Ja­maica Fran­chise at Wind­ward Sports Club. All match­es will have a 10am start ex­cept the Guyana/Wind­wards clash which gets un­der­way at 9.30am due to ear­ly fad­ing light in Guyana.

Teams

T&T Red Force: Rayad Em­rit (cap­tain), Bryan Charles, Yan­nic Cari­ah, Shan­non Gabriel, Akeal Ho­sein, Im­ran Khan, Evin Lewis, Ja­son Mo­hammed, Yan­nick Ot­t­ley, De­nesh Ramdin, Mar­lon Richards, Nicholas, Lendl Sim­mons.

Lee­wards: De­von Thomas (cap­tain), Quin­ton Boatswain, Jah­mar Hamil­ton, Yan­nick Leonard, Je­re­mi­ah Louis, An­tho­ny Mar­tin, Or­lan­do Pe­ters, Austin Richards Jr, Lyn­dell Richard­son, Akeem Saun­ders, Jacques Tay­lor, Gavin Tonge, Kel­bert Wal­ters.

stand­ings

FRAN­CHIS­ES M Pts

Guyana Jaguars 1 17

Ja­maica Fran­chise 1 16

Bar­ba­dos Pride 1 8

T&T Red Force 1 5

Wind­wards Vol­ca­noes 1 3

Lee­wards Fran­chise 1 2