Com­fort­ably poised near­ing the end of the group stage in the CG In­sur­ance Re­gion­al Su­per50 Cup to date, T&T’s Red Force coach David Fur­longe said on Sat­ur­day that his team is con­fi­dent ahead of a show­down with re­gion­al pow­er­house the Bar­ba­dos Pride at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba, San Fer­nan­do on Sun­day from 1 pm.

How­ev­er, he made it clear that he want­ed to fin­ish the pre­lim­i­nary round stage on a high be­fore the semi­fi­nals.

By win­ning all their match­es to date, the Red Force is al­ready as­sured of a place in next week’s play­off in­volv­ing the top four teams. Red Force’s like­ly op­po­nents will be the West In­dies Emerg­ing Play­ers team.

Dar­ren Bra­vo, who has two half-cen­turies (81 and 51) and got good starts in the oth­er match­es that he was al­lowed to bat, has led his team to play crick­et the way it should be played Fur­longe point­ed out, but his main con­cern has been at the start of their games.

Fur­longe said, “We want to fin­ish top of the group and then end on a high go­ing for­ward to the semi­fi­nal.”

He said, “Bar­ba­dos has all their Test play­ers and white ball play­ers avail­able, but we al­so have a great team. I think we have a well-bal­anced team, so I think we will give a good show­ing of our­selves to­mor­row (mean­ing Sun­day). The area that we have been work­ing on is that the oth­er teams have been scor­ing 10 runs an over, and we have been able to pull it back to four-point-some­thing runs in the last cou­ple of games. But that is an area that we con­tin­ue to work on.”

Ac­cord­ing to Fur­longe, the Red Force has been ba­si­cal­ly play­ing crick­et the way it should be played, which has as­sured them both bonus and match points. He said fur­ther there is al­so a need for his team to curb the quick scor­ing at the start of their in­nings.

The Red Force is in sec­ond po­si­tion over­all with 40 points and one round of match­es to play. The team has been sur­passed by the Lee­ward Is­lands with 44 points at the top of the eight-team stand­ing, while the Bar­ba­di­ans are in third with 37 points, fol­lowed by West In­dies Acad­e­my with 31, CCC Ma­roon­ers with 27, Guyana Harpy Ea­gles with 25, Wind­ward Is­lands Vol­ca­noes 17 and Ja­maica Scor­pi­ons on sev­en points ac­cord­ing to the lat­est stand­ings on Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

Mean­while, the un­pre­dictable weath­er con­di­tions have al­so played a ma­jor role in the Red Force match­es not ac­cu­mu­lat­ing more points. Red Force’s open­ing match of the tour­na­ment on Oc­to­ber 17 against Com­bine Col­leges and Cam­pus­es Ma­roon­ers and Thurs­day’s match against Ja­maica Scor­pi­ons both played at the Queen’s Park Oval in Port-of-Spain, have end­ed in no-re­sults cost­ing the host valu­able points.

Red Force has had a Man of The Match per­for­mance in the four match­es it has won—bats­men Kjorn Ot­t­ley and Ja­son Mo­hammed and all-rounder Yan­nic Cari­ah, who has picked up the ho­n­ours twice for both his bat­ting and bowl­ing ex­ploits against Guyana and the Lee­ward Is­lands.

De­spite that Red Force has reg­is­tered vic­to­ries against Wind­ward Is­lands Vol­ca­noes, Guyana Harpy Ea­gles, Lee­ward Is­land Hur­ri­canes, and West In­dies Acad­e­my.

Fur­lounge said be­cause of this his team may have lost some 13 points that would have giv­en them a sig­nif­i­cant lead.

“The weath­er is a great con­cern be­cause we have had two rained-out games which comes ba­si­cal­ly like we lost one game. This is be­cause we have lost four match points which you get for win­ning a game, and if you look at those games, you’re talk­ing about eight or nine points ex­tra.”

“ So you’re look­ing at 13 points that we’ve lost in those two games, which would have tak­en us well ahead of every­body at this stage. But you know there is noth­ing we can do about the weath­er. All we can do is hope that the Lord bless­es us with good weath­er to­mor­row (Mean­ing Sun­day).”

“We have the four match points that we lost, and then when you look at bonus points that we could have gained from bowl­ing and bat­ting. We have been gain­ing full bowl­ing points all the time and we missed the bowl­ing points in the first game that was rained out. And then we missed bat­ting points in that last game there,” Fur­longe point­ed out.

He be­lieves with all the teams well-bal­anced at this point, his team still has what it takes to claim the ti­tle.

Red Force has been boost­ed by for­mer T&T cap­tain Nicholas Pooran, who has re­placed Evin Lewis, 31, be­cause of in­jury.

Lewis played in on­ly one game, scor­ing 16 against Guyana on Oc­to­ber 21 at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba, San Fer­nan­do.