Vin­ode Mam­chan

For­mer West In­dies cap­tain De­nesh Ramdin will take over the reigns of the T&T Red Force crick­et team for the Re­gion­al Su­per50 tour­na­ment.

Ramdin cap­tained the T&T team in 2014 and was re­moved in pref­er­ence to all rounder Rayad Em­rit with the board at the time say­ing that Ramdin, be­cause of his in­ter­na­tion­al com­mit­ments with the West In­dies team, he will be un­avail­able to lead the team on a con­sis­tent ba­sis.

Now with Ramdin no longer cap­tain­ing the West In­dies team in any for­mat, he has made him­self avail­able to play for the T&T Red Force and will al­so take part in all the re­main­ing match­es in the Dig­i­cel Pro­fes­sion­al Crick­et League, when it re­sumes in March.

Ramdin re­places Yan­nick Ot­t­ley who led the Red Force dur­ing the pre-Christ­mas phase of the Dig­i­cel PCL. The T&T team is cur­rent­ly ly­ing at the bot­tom of the six-ta­ble stand­ings. It is the think­ing of the TTCB that Ramdin's in­clu­sion will bol­ster the team for the re­main­ing Dig­i­cel PCL match­es.

The rest of the team for the Re­gion­al Su­per50 will be se­lect­ed to­day when the se­lec­tors meet at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre (NCC). The se­lec­tion pan­el is head­ed by for­mer Test spin­ner Raph­ick Ju­madeen and in­cludes for­mer Test pac­er An­tho­ny Gray, First vice-pres­i­dent of the TTCB Lal­man Kow­lessar and for­mer na­tion­al play­er and cur­rent team man­ag­er Roland Sam­path.

For­mer West In­dies mid­dle or­der bats­man Gus Lo­gie will con­tin­ue as head coach of the team, and the TTCB is look­ing at get­ting as­sis­tance for him in terms of men­tal prepa­ra­tion for the play­ers ahead of the Re­gion­al Su­per50. Pres­i­dent of the TTCB, Az­im Bas­sarath re­cent­ly said that he is not too wor­ried about the cur­rent form of the Red Force. "We will have some se­nior play­ers com­ing in and last sea­son we were in a sim­i­lar po­si­tion lead­ing in­to the Su­per50 and we won it."

T&T will be based in An­tigua for the Re­gion­al Su­per50 and they will bat­tle the Lee­wards, Wind­wards, West In­dies U-19s, Guyana and Kent in their group.