JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Saturday, July 5, 2025

Nagico Super50 tourney bowls off today

by

20150114

Af­ter all the talk off the field con­cern­ing the se­lec­tion of the West In­dies World Cup team, the at­ten­tion fi­nal­ly moves to the field to­day, when the Nagi­co Su­per50 se­ries bowls off in T&T with two match­es.

De­fend­ing cham­pi­on Bar­ba­dos Pride will trav­el to Cen­tral Trinidad to do bat­tle with the Com­bined Cam­pus­es and Col­leges (CCC) in a match that will get off at 9 am. Lat­er on in the day, the sec­ond match comes off and this will in­volve the Guyana Jaguars against the Wind­wards Vol­ca­noes. This match will be played at the Queen's Park Oval, Port-of-Spain, and will be a day/night af­fair. The first ball is timed to be de­liv­ered at 1.30 pm and tick­ets for the match­es can be bought at the match venues.

The Bar­ba­di­ans pre­vailed over hosts and long-stand­ing re­gion­al sports ri­val, T&T, in the Grand Fi­nal at Queen's Park Oval last year and this would be a feath­er in their caps, go­ing in­to this year's tour­na­ment.

The ti­tle, their sev­enth in the re­gion­al One-day for­mat (in­clud­ing one shared), would have been a source of great re­lief for the Pride, since their pre­vi­ous ti­tle was shared with Lee­ward Is­lands Hur­ri­canes fol­low­ing a tied Grand Fi­nal five sea­sons ago.

Bar­ba­dos re­turns to the tour­na­ment as pas­sion­ate about suc­cess as they were last sea­son but recog­nis­es that it will be chal­leng­ing due to the pres­sure of de­fend­ing the ti­tle and the loss of a num­ber of play­ers that were key to their suc­cess last year be­cause of West In­dies in­ter­na­tion­al du­ty.

The CCC has been known to up­set the big­ger named teams and Bar­ba­dos will be ful­ly aware of this. Their head coach the for­mer Bar­ba­dos play­er Floyd Reifer thinks his side is more in the tour­na­ment for de­vel­op­ment pur­pos­es.

"It is not about us try­ing to prove any­thing. Our role in this crick­et is to de­vel­op play­ers and in the last sev­en years we have de­vel­oped a lot of play­ers through the CCC pro­gramme. I could call a list of more than 20 play­ers that have passed through the pro­gramme–some are play­ing for West In­dies "A", we have Chad­wick Wal­ton on the West In­dies team and we have oth­er play­ers that have gone back to their ter­ri­to­ries and dom­i­nat­ed the game there.

"So we have done well in terms of our role in de­vel­op­ment, in terms of young play­ers in the Caribbean, but it's sad we are not in­volved in the Four-Day Tour­na­ment be­cause we have a lot of young tal­ent this year and we are very ex­cit­ed about it. We have a good crop of young fast bowlers and bats­men, so we will be look­ing for­ward to the Nagi­co Su­per50 and al­low­ing these young play­ers to show­case their tal­ents."

As the sec­ond most suc­cess­ful side in the his­to­ry of the tour­na­ment, the last sev­en years with­out a ti­tle will feel al­most like an eter­ni­ty for Guyana Jaguars. How­ev­er, ta­ble-top­ping per­for­mances in the WICB Pro­fes­sion­al Crick­et League Re­gion­al Four-Day Tour­na­ment at the end of last year has prompt­ed op­ti­mism that they could end the drought.

Coach Esaun Cran­don said, "A lot of peo­ple may iden­ti­fy us as favourites. Ob­vi­ous­ly, we have got to back our­selves to win the tour­na­ment."

Wind­wards coach Ian Allen is al­so back­ing his team to do well.

He said, "I think we have a good chance. We won it on­ly two years ago, but we did not do too well last year and the play­ers are con­scious of it. They are work­ing hard to im­prove up­on that per­for­mance and get close to the lev­el of con­fi­dence that will al­low them to ex­e­cute."


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored