Vin­ode Mam­chan

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board (TTCB) has re­ceived a five-day ex­ten­sion from the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) in or­der to de­clare their fi­nal squad for the re­gion­al T20 crick­et se­ries. Chair­man of the na­tion­al se­lec­tion pan­el, Dud­nath Ramkessoon, re­vealed that the fi­nal squad was to be de­clared by Fri­day last week, but has been post­poned to Thurs­day 16. Ac­cord­ing to the for­mer West In­dies youth cap­tain, the rain has forced the se­lec­tors to de­lay the nam­ing of the team.

"We have been bad­ly af­fect­ed by rain and this is why we could not ho­n­our the ini­tial dead­line. In­stead we are hop­ing for at least some ac­tion ear­ly this week so that by Thurs­day the team will be sent to the WICB." The man­age­ment of the team has now sched­uled two match­es for Wednes­day, weath­er per­mit­ting, so that the se­lec­tors can have a look at the play­ers for a fi­nal time be­fore set­tling on the fi­nal squad. Ramkessoon said the se­lec­tors will be hop­ing for ac­tion else they would have to go on past form and per­for­mances in re­gion­al crick­et. "Our job has been very dif­fi­cult this year be­cause of the in­ac­tiv­i­ty of the play­ers, so it will re­al­ly be won­der­ful to have the guys out there, so we can have a fi­nal look."

Ramkessoon added that the loss of Dwayne Bra­vo and Ke­iron Pol­lard, al­though huge, will present op­por­tu­ni­ties for oth­er crick­eters. "When Guyana won the tour­na­ment, they did not have play­ers of the cal­i­bre of Pol­lard and Bra­vo. How­ev­er, two un­knowns in Dav­en­dra Bishoo and Jonathan Foo came out and made a name for them­selves. Who knows? Maybe the same can hap­pen for T&T this time around," he said. Pol­lard and Bra­vo are miss­ing the tour­na­ment due to their com­mit­ments with their Aus­tralian clubs South Aus­tralia and Vic­to­ria.