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Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Struggling Red Force - A symptom of inadequate local red ball cricket

by

Colin Murray
447 days ago
20240418

On Wednesday was the start of the fi­nal round of the Four-Day West In­dies Cham­pi­onship.

Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) could not have set it up any bet­ter as four teams are sep­a­rat­ed by five points, and any team from Wind­ward Is­lands Vol­ca­noes (87.6), Bar­ba­dos Pride (83.4), Lee­ward Is­lands Hur­ri­canes (83.2) and Guyana Harpy Ea­gles (82.8), can win the ti­tle.

The big game is at the Queen’s Park Oval (St Clair, Port-of-Spain) with the Hur­ri­canes tak­ing on the Vol­ca­noes, and if the Vol­ca­noes win it, they could very well take the ti­tle. On the oth­er end of the ta­ble, Trinidad and To­ba­go Red Force trav­elled to Sabi­na Park (Ja­maica) to play the Ja­maica Scor­pi­ons in a play­off to see who will fin­ish fifth or sixth in the stand­ings.

For yet an­oth­er year, the Red Force have flat­tered to de­ceive in the red ball ver­sion of the game. They have failed to win the cov­et­ed re­gion­al ti­tle since 2006, some 18 years ago, and the ques­tion will again be asked as to why. The ques­tion of who or what is to blame for this shouldn’t go unan­swered. Is it the coach, the board, or the play­ers? Is it a com­bi­na­tion of all three, or was the prepa­ra­tion just not good enough?

How can most of these play­ers ex­cel in the white ball game, but when it comes to the red ball, year­after year, the Red Force seems to strug­gle? The in­con­sis­ten­cy is mind-bog­gling as they seem to play one good match and then play an aw­ful game and go from a top 4 po­si­tion in the stand­ings, chal­leng­ing for the ti­tle, to oc­cu­py­ing a po­si­tion in the low­er half of the ta­ble. Per­haps as a bit of a re­lief and as a show of less em­bar­rass­ment for the Red Force, be­cause Com­bined Cam­pus­es and Col­leges (CCC) and the West In­dies Acad­e­my are tak­ing part in the tour­na­ment, they will be saved from the in­dig­ni­ty of fin­ish­ing sec­ond to last or even fin­ish­ing at the bot­tom of the stand­ings.

The re­sults read like a roller coast­er ride af­ter the washed-out game against the Guyana Harpy Ea­gles. I sup­pose one can point to that and make an ex­cuse that if that game had been played, the Red Force might have been 25 points bet­ter off - wish­ful think­ing. Af­ter the Harpy Ea­gles, they blew away the West In­dies Acad­e­my, then lost to the Lee­wards Hur­ri­canes, de­feat­ed the Wind­wards Vol­ca­noes, and then were hu­mil­i­at­ed by the Bar­ba­dos Pride, and then de­feat­ed the CCC. Amaz­ing­ly, it was win one, lose one with ab­solute­ly no con­sis­ten­cy, and it begs the ques­tion of why this in­con­sis­ten­cy was so preva­lent in the Red Force squad.

When you look at the squad, the tal­ent is un­doubt­ed­ly there. The find of the tour­na­ment is Amir Jan­goo, who bat­ted with the ma­tu­ri­ty that he had been miss­ing from his game for so long. Jyd Goolie al­so had some good in­nings; Tion Web­ster got a cen­tu­ry against the Vol­ca­noes; Ja­son Mo­hammed has had a good tour­na­ment but can’t go on for­ev­er; Vikash Mo­han start­ed well with two half-cen­turies but has fall­en away bad­ly. Joshua Da Sil­va, as cap­tain and a sea­soned West In­dies play­er, should have done bet­ter, but in gen­er­al, the bat­ting failed the Red Force when it mat­tered most.

The bowlers tried their best, but un­for­tu­nate­ly, they could not de­fend against the low scores of the Hur­ri­canes and the Pride. Jay­den Seales looks back to his best, and go­ing off to play coun­ty crick­et in Eng­land will do him the world of good. At the end of his spell, he will be an even bet­ter bowler. I just hope his work­load is man­aged prop­er­ly, but he is ide­al­ly suit­ed to the seam-friend­ly Eng­lish con­di­tions. An­der­son Phillip has done ex­treme­ly well and is push­ing for a place back in the West In­dies squad. He will give the se­lec­tors plen­ty to think about as he must get some con­sid­er­a­tion to be on the plane.

The spin­ners Khary Pierre and Bryan Charles bowled well, but again when the bat­ting failed, they were left with noth­ing to de­fend. I was cry­ing out for a leg spin­ner to be in­clud­ed but vet­er­an Im­ran Khan, when giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty, did not make the most of it. The coach­ing staff will have to scout the teams and look for good up-and-com­ing leg spin­ners or left-arm back-of-the-hand spin­ners who can turn them­selves in­to match win­ners. The var­i­ous clubs have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s crick­et to ex­pose the tal­ent through­out the length and breadth of the coun­try to the se­lec­tors. Are the clubs look­ing for young tal­ent, not on­ly in the bat­ting de­part­ment but al­so young bowlers with some form of po­ten­tial that can go on to rep­re­sent the Red Force at the four-day lev­el?

I have al­ways main­tained that, lo­cal­ly, not enough red-ball crick­et is played. Teams play two-day games, so there is al­ways a hus­tle to bat quick­ly and try and win the game in the two days of play that are avail­able. I have over­ly plead­ed for the need for six teams play­ing three-day crick­et home and away which will give valu­able ex­pe­ri­ence and un­der­stand­ing of what is need­ed at the red ball game. Bats­men will have more op­por­tu­ni­ties to build an in­nings, and bowlers will, week in and week out, bowl to bet­ter bats­men. Un­til more em­pha­sis is placed on the longer ver­sion of the game, the Red Force will con­tin­ue to strug­gle. Maybe next year, they will prove me wrong, as lo­cal­ly, noth­ing will change.

I have nev­er been privy to a post­mortem over the years by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board (TTCB) as to what went wrong with the per­for­mance of the team. If there is a post­mortem, it may have been done and kept in­ter­nal­ly by the ex­ec­u­tive to take I sup­pose, what­ev­er ac­tion is nec­es­sary if any ac­tion is tak­en at all. We will await a post­mortem this year it may make in­ter­est­ing read­ing.

In clos­ing, thanks to all those who sent me con­grat­u­la­tions on Team Pro­gres­sive win­ning the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) elec­tions with a re­sound­ing vic­to­ry. The lo­cal foot­ball fra­ter­ni­ty has spo­ken. We will strive for trans­paren­cy, good gov­er­nance, hon­esty, fair­ness, and in­clu­siv­i­ty, among oth­er things. Let us to­geth­er bring Trinidad and To­ba­go’s foot­ball back to a lev­el of re­spectabil­i­ty in the re­gion as we once again build and grow the brand glob­al­ly. Thanks again to all who sup­port­ed!

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.


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