Vin­ode Mam­chan

The T&T Red Force crick­et team will be go­ing out to do bat­tle against the Wind­ward Vol­ca­noes from 3pm to­day at the Queen's Park Oval in Trinidad, look­ing to make a good start against their neme­sis in the open­ing round of match­es in the 2016/17 Dig­i­cel Pro­fes­sion­al Crick­et league.

The Vol­ca­noes have won five of their last sev­en match­es against the Red Force, in­clud­ing the last three oc­ca­sions they have played in T&T.

New Red Force cap­tain Yan­nick Ot­t­ley think his young team can make an im­pres­sion. "Our prepa­ra­tion has been good so far and it is all about go­ing out and do well for our fans. It is im­por­tant that we get a good start to this tour­na­ment on our home ground.

"I did lead the team a cou­ple times be­fore and I am grate­ful for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do it again. The guys have sup­port­ed me in the past, they ap­pre­ci­at­ed me and now is just about get­ting the guys to per­form to the best of their abil­i­ty."

Ot­t­ley's op­po­site num­ber Liam Se­bastien has down­played his team suc­cess in the past against T&T: "It is im­por­tant to get win­ning start, as this is a new tour­na­ment and day/night fix­ture. We can­not dwell too much on the past we just have to go out there and get the job done.

"We have been train­ing very hard, we have been putting in a lot of ses­sions and even had a short tour of An­tigua. This means that the prepa­ra­tions have been good and the play­ers should be ready to per­form well in this first match."

Last sea­son, the Vol­ca­noes fin­ished close to bot­tom of the six-team ta­ble and Se­bastien wants bet­ter bat­ting to lift them this time around. "We need to im­prove on the per­for­mance from last year, we ac­cept­ed that we didn't do well and look­ing to get high­er up this year. We didn't bat well at all last year, we could not gain that many bat­ting points and when this hap­pens you ob­vi­ous­ly have a low score to de­fend and lose more of­ten that not."

To­day's game will be the first of six day/night match­es card­ed for this tour­na­ment as the WICB is look­ing to give the re­gion­al play­ers ex­po­sure to these con­di­tions be­cause the ICC is now tak­ing Test crick­et in this di­rec­tion.

Squads

RED FORCE: Yan­nick Ot­t­ley (cap­tain), Yan­nic Cari­ah, Shel­don Cot­trell, Jyd Goolie, Kyle Hope, Jon-Russ Jages­sar, Steven Kat­wa­roo, Im­ran Khan, Ja­son Mo­hammed, Khary Pierre, Roshon Primus, Mar­lon Richards

VOL­CA­NOES: Liam Se­bastien (cap­tain), Sunil Am­bris, Nars­ingh De­onar­ine, Tar­ryck Gabriel, Kavem Hodge, De­lorn John­son, Mervin Matthew, Ken­roy Pe­ters, Jer­lani Robin­son, Shane Shilling­ford, De­von Smith,

Ty­rone Theophile.

Fact box

�2 Sunil Am­bris has scored 971 runs and re­quires 29 for 1,000

�2 Kyle Hope has scored 951 runs and re­quires 49 for 1,000

�2 Steven Kat­wa­roo has scored 968 runs and re­quires 32 for 1,000

�2 De­von Smith has ap­peared in 106 match­es and re­quire one for 107 that would make him the joint most-capped for the Vol­ca­noes (with for­mer cap­tain Rawl Lewis) and joint-third on the over­all list

�2 Mervin Matthew has tak­en 97 wick­ets and re­quires three for 100