Vin­ode Mam­chan

The T&T Red Force will re­lease the names of the play­ers to rep­re­sent them at the sec­ond Nagi­co Su­per50 se­ries, which starts on Jan­u­ary 15 in T&T.

The T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) has been able to ne­go­ti­ate spon­sor­ship with the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) and de­tails of that con­tin­ued as­so­ci­a­tion will be re­vealed at the press con­fer­ence at the Pres­i­dent's Box at the Queen's Park Oval at 10.30am.

The op­por­tu­ni­ty will al­so be tak­en to un­veil a new NGC Re­play Screen which will be op­er­a­tional dur­ing the Nagi­co Su­per50 tour­na­ment.

T&T Red Force will go in­to ac­tion on Jan­u­ary 16, the sec­ond day of the tour­na­ment, when they come up against the West In­dies Un­der-19 team at Shaw Park in To­ba­go.

The lo­cals are ex­pect­ed to field a strong team for the tour­na­ment, as most of their se­nior play­ers are avail­able, af­ter be­ing over­looked by the West In­dies se­lec­tors for the lim­it­ed overs se­ries against South Africa.

The na­tion­al se­lec­tors can on­ly choose 14 play­ers for the start of the se­ries and with Dwayne Bra­vo and Ke­iron Pol­lard play­ing for the West In­dies in South Africa un­til Jan­u­ary 14 - the fi­nal T20 match of the se­ries, a sit­u­a­tion would arise where they can on­ly choose from 12 play­ers for the open­ing match against the WI U-19s on Jan­u­ary 16.

Bra­vo and his broth­er Dar­ren, as well as Pol­lard and Ravi Ram­paul have been over­looked by the West In­dies se­lec­tors for the lim­it­ed overs se­ries in South Africa. Mys­tery spin­ner Sunil Nar­ine, now com­ing back from be­ing called for an il­le­gal ac­tion, will al­so be avail­able for this se­ries, as he was not avail­able for se­lec­tion for South Africa.

This makes for a very strong team for the Red Force, who would like to go one bet­ter than last year. In 2014, the Red Force, over­whelm­ing favourites went un­der to Bar­ba­dos in a cliff hang­er at the Queen's Park Oval. All of the oth­er ter­ri­to­ries were up to full strength and now with those coun­tries miss­ing their top play­ers, Red Force has a huge ad­van­tage. Added to this they will be play­ing at home and fans will ex­pect noth­ing less than the ti­tle this time around.

The tour­na­ment will be played at three venues, with all match­es at the Queen's Park Oval play­ing as day/night af­fairs, while oth­er games at Shaw Park and the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre (NCC) will start at 9.30am and played en­tire­ly dur­ing the day.

T&T will play one match at Shaw Park and all oth­ers at the Queen's Park Oval.