Vin­ode Mam­chan

Mid­dle or­der bats­man Dar­ren Bra­vo has not been se­lect­ed for the first two match­es of the West In­dies Pro­fes­sion­al crick­et league.

Bra­vo was one of the play­ers who abort­ed the tour of In­dia re­cent­ly. Chair­man of the na­tion­al se­lec­tion pan­el Alec Burns told the T&T Guardian that Bra­vo had not in­di­cat­ed his will­ing­ness to play for this coun­try, since his re­turn from In­dia.

"We planned a meet­ing for him to at­tend to dis­cuss his avail­abil­i­ty for the match­es and af­ter agree­ing to at­tend, he did not come to the meet­ing. He did not com­mu­ni­cate with us to let us know why he did not at­tend.

"We took this to mean that he was not in­ter­est­ed in play­ing at this time."

When asked why the se­lec­tion pan­el did not con­tact the play­er, af­ter he did not show up for the meet­ing, Burns, a for­mer na­tion­al pac­er, said, "What about the play­er call­ing us? Wasn't it in his in­ter­est to call and let us know that he could not make the meet­ing but was still in­ter­est­ed in play­ing the crick­et?

"These play­ers need to un­der­stand that it is in their in­ter­est to com­mu­ni­cate with the se­lec­tors to let them know of their avail­abil­i­ty."

An­oth­er no­table ab­sen­tee from the team to play Bar­ba­dos from Fri­day at the Oval is pac­er Ravi Ram­paul. Burns re­vealed that Ram­paul would be out of the coun­try, since his wife is hav­ing a ba­by.

"He would not be avail­able at this time and we un­der­stood his po­si­tion."

Mean­while, the lone Red Force im­port, Ramnaresh Sar­wan, has been in­clud­ed in the 13-man squad and to­geth­er with open­er Lendl Sim­mons and for­mer cap­tain De­nesh Ramdin, will have the job of lead­ing the bat­ting.

Coach Gus Lo­gie is con­fi­dent of a good show­ing: "We want to take it a step fur­ther and go all the way this time. We have spo­ken about the ob­jec­tive of win­ning the Re­gion­al 4-Day tour­na­ment and the NAGI­CO Su­per 50 tour­na­ment. We have a mix of youth and ex­pe­ri­ence, but we see the com­ing sea­son as a chal­lenge and to es­tab­lish our­selves as a force in the four-day for­mat in par­tic­u­lar and this new sea­son and for­mat gives us the per­fect op­por­tu­ni­ty to do so.

"Our bat­ting has not con­sis­tent­ly scored runs, par­tic­u­lar­ly the kind of big in­di­vid­ual scores and to­tals that put you in a po­si­tion to win four-day match­es. It's an area that we have tried to work very hard cor­rect­ing and so we are re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to the play­ers re­al­ly go­ing out and bat­ting for long pe­ri­ods and ac­cu­mu­lat­ing the big scores and to­tals that would al­low our bowlers the op­por­tu­ni­ty to put pres­sure on the op­po­si­tion."

The for­mer West In­dies bats­man is look­ing to Sar­wan to lend his valu­able ex­pe­ri­ence: "We had a num­ber of young and ex­cit­ing play­ers but we need­ed a play­er that could bring a lot more sta­bil­i­ty and ex­pe­ri­ence in the mid­dle or­der, so that's why we chose Ramnaresh. We are look­ing for­ward to him bring­ing not just runs but his ex­pe­ri­ence that he will men­tor our younger play­ers so that they can learn from him.

Red Force team

Evin Lewis, Lendl Sim­mons, Yan­nick Ot­t­ley, Ramnaresh Sar­wan, Ja­son Mo­hammed, De­nesh Ramdin, Akeal Ho­sein, Im­ran Khan, Rayad Em­rit (capt), Shan­non Gabriel, Mar­lon Richards, Bryan Charles, Yan­nic Car­ri­ah.