Vin­ode Mam­chan

Bar­ba­dos se­nior crick­et team will vis­it Trinidad at the end of De­cem­ber to take part in a four-way T20 crick­et fes­ti­val at Guaracara Park in Pointe-a-Pierre or­gan­ised by the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB).This was re­vealed by first vice-pres­i­dent of the TTCB, Dud­nath Ramkessoon on Thurs­day. The four teams vy­ing for a cash prize will be T&T se­nior team, T&T 'A' team, T&T Acad­e­my team and Bar­ba­dos.The tour­na­ment will run from De­cem­ber 28-30 and will take a round-robin for­mat. Last year, the TTCB held a sim­i­lar tour­na­ment at the same venue and it proved a tremen­dous suc­cess with the crowds com­ing out to sup­port the se­ries. On that oc­ca­sion the for­eign team was Guyana.

This tour­na­ment will al­so prove as a warm-up se­ries for the na­tion­al se­nior team be­fore they de­fend their re­gion­al T20 ti­tle in T&T and Bar­ba­dos in Jan­u­ary.Ac­cord­ing to Ramkessoon: "We are still fi­nal­is­ing the cash prize and so on but the fes­ti­val is on and will take place just af­ter the Christ­mas. We played this last year as a re­place­ment for the an­nu­al North/South Clas­sic and it made more sense hav­ing the na­tion­al play­ers take part in a T20 tour­na­ment rather than a four-day tour­na­ment with the re­gion­al T20 so close at hand."

Ramkessoon, who is al­so chair­man of the na­tion­al se­nior se­lec­tion pan­el added: "The West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) has asked that we sub­mit our na­tion­al team for the re­gion­al T20 by De­cem­ber 7, so we will name the team by De­cem­ber 6 and they will con­tin­ue their train­ing. This se­ries will form part of their prepa­ra­tions."The na­tion­al team has had their train­ing in­ter­rupt­ed by the cur­rent in­clement weath­er, as their first tri­al match card­ed for this com­ing Sat­ur­day has al­ready been called off. "We have six tri­al match­es planned but un­for­tu­nate­ly we have had to call off the first one be­cause ground staff at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre (NCC) in Bal­main, Cou­va, has not been able to pre­pare the pitch."The rain has been belt­ing down for the past few days and the venue will not be ready in time. We are hop­ing to get in the next five match­es in or­der to give as many play­ers a chance to ad­dress the se­lec­tors be­fore we name the team."In the mean­time the na­tion­al crick­eters con­tin­ue to train at the in­door fa­cil­i­ties of the Sir Frank Wor­rell Crick­et Cen­tre.