Mid­dle-or­der bat­ter Mark Deyal wants to see a sea red when he walks out to bat for the T&T Red Force in the Crick­et West In­dies Su­per50 Cup which bowls off in T&T on Tues­day.

Hav­ing failed to make any fi­nal XI in last year’s cam­paign, Deyal has not played List A crick­et since 2017 when he suit­ed up for the Com­bined, Col­leges and Cam­pus­es (CCC).

Yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, fol­low­ing an ear­ly morn­ing train­ing ses­sion at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre (NCC) in Bal­main, Cou­va, Deyal shared with Guardian Me­dia Sports that it feels good to be back.

“It's a bet­ter feel­ing know­ing that the tour­na­ment will be played in Trinidad. Get­ting to per­form, get­ting to play in front of your home crowd is al­ways a won­der­ful feel­ing. Com­ing back in­to this as a play­er, I mean I was there last year as well, but un­for­tu­nate­ly, I didn't play any games. So I'm hop­ing that this sea­son will be a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent,” said the all-rounder.

Deyal played sev­er­al years with the St Lu­cia fran­chise in the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) T20 tour­na­ment be­fore sign­ing with the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers, this past sea­son.

“Well, words can't re­al­ly ex­plain it, to be hon­est with you. It's a fan­tas­tic feel­ing when you walk out whether it be in the Oval or in Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um, and you look around and you see a sea of red. It's some­thing that makes your pores rise. Just know­ing that that en­tire sup­port is there for you and there for your team. It's a feel­ing that re­al­ly can't be de­scribed,” said Deyal, who had fond mem­o­ries of be­ing a ‘King’ with St Lu­cia.

“Yes, I was at St Lu­cia for a few years, which I was very grate­ful and thank­ful for, but a home team will al­ways be a home. Home is where the heart is!”

On his re­turn, he made a call to the crick­et-lov­ing na­tion to show the same sup­port they showed for the Knight Rid­ers to the Red Force.

He said: “I just want to en­cour­age the fans to come out and sup­port. Show that die-hard sup­port, that pa­tience you have been show­ing us for years. The added mo­ti­va­tion is that, as I said, the Fi­nals will be played in Trinidad so that is some­thing that we're re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to this year. So hav­ing the sup­port of the crowd there, the fans, the spec­ta­tors, will al­ways give us that moral boost as well. You know, that 12th man on the field.”

On his per­son­al goals, he is hop­ing to help fill the shoes left va­cant by for­mer cap­tain, the in-form Nicholas Pooran, who is un­avail­able for the re­gion­al tour­na­ment.

“I put my hand up, and I want to do well for the team. Nicholas is a very im­por­tant part to any team that he plays, whichev­er for­mat he plays for. So, it's ob­vi­ous­ly huge boots to fill. Whether it be my­self, whether it be any­one else in the team, you know, each one of us re­alis­es the op­por­tu­ni­ty that presents it­self.”

De­spite be­ing on a team with at least four front­line spin­ners, Deyal is con­fi­dent he still has a role to play with the ball in a team which in­cludes Sunil Nar­ine, Akeal Ho­sein, Khary Pierre and Yan­nic Cari­ah.

"I al­ways see a role for me with the ball in any team that I play. So I would say we have five spin­ners, I wouldn't say four, but yes def­i­nite­ly, es­pe­cial­ly with the wick­ets, in gen­er­al, it al­ways of­fers some as­sis­tance for the spin­ners,” said Deyal.

The host coun­try opens its cam­paign against CCC on Tues­day at the Queen’s Park Oval in St Clair, Port-of-Spain.