There were no sur­pris­es when the T&T Red Force an­nounced the 14-mem­ber squad on Mon­day for the Crick­et West In­dies Su­per 50 Cup, which bowls off next Wednes­day at the Queen’s Park Oval in St Clair, Port-of-Spain.

Dar­ren Bra­vo has been con­firmed as the cap­tain and he will have wick­et­keep­er Joshua Da Sil­va as the vice-cap­tain in the eight-team re­gion­al com­pe­ti­tion.

The bowl­ing will be bol­stered by cham­pi­on off-spin­ner Sunil Nar­ine, as he will lead four front­line spin­ners as Yan­nic Cari­ah, Akeal Ho­sein and Khary Pierre as the oth­er op­tions.

The bat­ting will be led by left-hand­ed at­tack­ing bats­man Evin Lewis at the top of the in­nings, as he is back in­to the team af­ter a two-year ab­sence. His open­ing part­ner is ex­pect­ed to be Kjorn Ot­t­ley.

Vet­er­an Ja­son Mo­hammed will so­lid­i­fy a mid­dle or­der that will in­clude skip­per Dar­ren Bra­vo, Tion Web­ster and Mark Deyal, who played his last List A match in 2017 for the Com­bined Col­leges and Cam­pus­es (CCC). The mid­dle will have to do with­out the in-form Nicholas Pooran who has not made him­self avail­able for this year’s edi­tion.

Shan­non Gabriel and Jay­den Seales will lead the pace bowl­ing de­part­ment, which in­cludes Ter­rance Hinds with Web­ster as an­oth­er op­tion for cap­tain Bra­vo, who can al­so pro­vide a fur­ther op­tion as he proved dur­ing this year’s First Class com­pe­ti­tion with his ex­ag­ger­at­ed swing.

Head coach David Fur­longe is hap­py about the fit­ness lev­el of the squad ahead of the tour­na­ment, which will be held across three venues – Queen’s Park Oval, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) in St Au­gus­tine and the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba, San Fer­nan­do.

“The play­ers went through the mo­tions to­day, we still have one more test to do which we'll do on Thurs­day be­fore prac­tice. But all the play­ers came through with good re­sults this morn­ing,” said Fur­longe, yes­ter­day.

De­spite the dif­fer­ent fran­chis­es and dif­fer­ent for­mats, it seems the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is up to the Red Force play­ers to re­deem the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers for the woe­ful per­for­mance at this year’s Caribbean Pre­mier League fi­nal. Fur­longe ac­knowl­edges the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty placed up­on the team.

“Up un­til last week Fri­day, some­body was telling me that they don't know where the crowd sup­port will be be­cause the peo­ple are still dis­ap­point­ed with the TKR loss. But it's a dif­fer­ent fran­chise, this is Trinidad fran­chise here. So we hope that they could come out and give us that sup­port and we hope that we wouldn't dis­ap­point them,” said Fur­longe.

The oth­er teams in the com­pe­ti­tion are de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Ja­maica Scor­pi­ons, Bar­ba­dos Pride, Guyana Harpy Ea­gles, Lee­ward Is­lands Hur­ri­canes, Wind­ward Is­lands Vol­ca­noes, the West In­dies Acad­e­my and CCC.

The top four teams qual­i­fy for the semi­fi­nals on No­vem­ber 8 and 9 bat­tling for a spot in the fi­nal card­ed for No­vem­ber 11.

Last year, the Red Force de­feat­ed Pride in the semi­fi­nals but was beat­en in the fi­nal by the Scor­pi­ons.

Squad:

Squad: Dar­ren Bra­vo (cap­tain), Joshua Da Sil­va (vice-cap­tain), Kjorn Ot­t­ley, Tion Web­ster, Ja­son Mo­hammed, Akeal Ho­sein, Evin Lewis, Sunil Nar­ine, Yan­nic Cari­ah, Jay­den Seales, Shan­non Gabriel, Ter­rance Hinds, Mark Deyal, Khary Pierre.

Coach: David Fur­longe