The T&TCB has praised the per­for­mance of the na­tion­al crick­et team fol­low­ing their em­phat­ic vic­to­ry over Bar­ba­dos on Sat­ur­day night in the fi­nal of the 2016 Nagi­co Su­per50 re­gion­al tour­na­ment at the Queen's Park Oval, Port-of-Spain.

On the back of an in­nings of 97 runs by star bats­man Dar­ren Bra­vo, and an all-round bowl­ing per­for­mance led by Rayad Em­rit's three-wick­et haul, the Red Force clinched their sec­ond con­sec­u­tive Su­per50 crown with a 72-run win in front of more than 7,000 home fans.

On Mon­day, pres­i­dent of the TTCB, Az­im Bas­sarath, said that the crick­eters should be com­pli­ment­ed for their hard work, fo­cus and com­mit­ment dur­ing the en­tire two-week com­pe­ti­tion dur­ing which they did not let their guard down.

He said the Su­per50 vic­to­ry was a re­sult of team­work when every­one pulled to­geth­er for the greater good of sup­port­ing each oth­er and rep­re­sent­ing their na­tion with their best ef­fort on the field.

"Words can­not ad­e­quate­ly de­scribe how proud the Red Force team has made crick­et fans and the en­tire na­tion with their show of crick­et ex­cel­lence. The pub­lic too has been ex­cep­tion­al in their sup­port dur­ing this cam­paign," said Bas­sarath.

Left-han­der Bra­vo was du­ly named Man-of-the-Match in the fi­nal for his su­perb knock, af­ter join­ing the team last week­end fol­low­ing the West In­dies tour of Aus­tralia. In this three in­nings for the team he scored 274 runs com­pris­ing scores of 82, 95, and 97 for a phe­nom­e­nal av­er­age of 91.33.

Al­so sin­gled out was Red Force debu­tant Jon Russ Jagge­sar, an off-spin­ner who bagged 14 wick­ets, sec­ond in the tour­na­ment on­ly to Sulie­man Benn of the Bar­ba­dos Pride, and who was in­stru­men­tal in keep­ing the op­pos­ing bats­men in check through­out the se­ries.

Bas­sarath said that de­spite the fact that the na­tion­al squad was de­plet­ed be­cause of in­jury and the un­avail­abil­i­ty of sev­er­al key play­ers, the team showed the depth of tal­ent that cur­rent­ly ex­ists in the na­tion­al set-up.He said Bra­vo and wick­et­keep­er De­nesh Ramdin joined the squad in the last week of the tour­na­ment, af­ter the Test tour Down Un­der, and made an in­valu­able con­tri­bu­tion in every match they played.

"I was im­pressed by the way the se­nior play­ers pulled their weight and led by ex­am­ple as they did not dis­ap­point in keep­ing the mo­men­tum go­ing which had been es­tab­lished ear­li­er in the tour­na­ment," said Bas­sarath.

He said that the lead­er­ship qual­i­ties shown by Ja­son Mo­hammed should al­so be com­mend­ed, as he did not shun his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and did put his best foot for­ward in the pre­vail­ing cir­cum­stances.

The crick­et chief said the skip­per was al­so giv­en in­valu­able sup­port by all­rounder Rayad Em­rit, who was one of the stand-out fast bowlers of the tour­na­ment, who along with open­ing bats­man Evin Lewis showed that they had stepped up their game fol­low­ing a stint in the Bangladesh Pre­mier League T20 pri­or to the Nagi­co Su­per50.

Bas­sarath al­so had en­cour­ag­ing words for Bar­ba­di­an open­ing bats­man Kyle Hope, se­lect­ed by the Red Force as a fran­chise play­er and who fit­ted in per­fect­ly with his adopt­ed team, and nev­er flinched even it was against his is­land of birth in the fi­nal.

Al­so com­ing in for high praise was the tech­ni­cal team com­pris­ing se­nior coach Gus Lo­gie, a for­mer out­stand­ing West In­dies play­er, his as­sis­tant Kelvin Williams, and no-non­sense man­ag­er Roland Sam­path who all en­sured that every­thing was done ac­cord­ing to the book and the ob­jec­tives of the team were re­alised.

He said not to be for­got­ten were stand-in wick­et­keep­er Stephen Kat­wa­roo who al­so had an ex­cep­tion­al tour­na­ment be­hind the stumps.