Vin­ode Mam­chan

Man­ag­er of the T&T team Col­in Bor­de has cred­it­ed Ke­iron Pol­lard's pro­fes­sion­al stint to his in­creased ma­tu­ri­ty as a play­er. Pol­lard scored a 19-ball half cen­tu­ry on Sat­ur­day night to lead T&T to vic­to­ry over the Lee­ward Is­lands in their Re­gion­al T20 clash in Bar­ba­dos. He struck sev­en six­es and a four in his knock that left fans at the pic­turesque venue spell­bound.

Bor­de said yes­ter­day: "We have no­ticed a big change in Ke­iron. Ob­vi­ous­ly his stints in Aus­tralia, Eng­land and In­dia have helped him tremen­dous­ly and he has re­al­ly ma­tured as a play­er. I find for his age, be­ing just 23 he has ma­tured very quick­ly and we are ex­pect­ing a lot more from him. Against the Lee­wards he was su­perb, bru­tal, clin­i­cal and pro­fes­sion­al. This is as a re­sult of play­ing with the top T20 teams and with the top T20 play­ers from around the world."

Mean­while, turn­ing his at­ten­tion to the rest of his team Bor­de said they were stern­ly test­ed against the Lee­wards but came through. "We were stern­ly test­ed by the Lee­wards but the guys showed the req­ui­site char­ac­ter to win. This team likes to win and knows how to win," he said. Look­ing ahead at the rest of the tour­na­ment Bor­de said: "We are con­fi­dent that we can re­turn as cham­pi­ons of T20 crick­et in the Caribbean and we are tak­ing it one game at a time and giv­ing it our best.

"In T20 crick­et you need to think quick­ly and change things rapid­ly. This is the key and we have some very in­tel­li­gent play­ers out there, who can do that and hence we have been suc­cess­ful." The T&T play­ers had a three-hour ses­sion at the Queen's Park Oval yes­ter­day and to­day they will show up at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre for an­oth­er three-hour ses­sion from 2 pm to 5 pm. To­mor­row they come up against Ja­maica in the fi­nal pre­lim­i­nary round match at the Queen's Park Oval from 8 pm.