Vin­ode Mam­chan

The in­clement weath­er be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced in T&T, has left play­ers un­easy, as they make their fi­nal push for places in the knock­out stage of the Re­gion­al T20 crick­et se­ries. Af­ter the first leg in Bar­ba­dos, the T20 cir­cus moves to T&T, home of the de­fend­ing T20 cham­pi­ons, who will come up against their main chal­lengers Ja­maica in their last Zone A pre­lim­i­nary clash at 8 pm tonight. Ja­maica leads the stand­ings, with eight points. T&T has the same num­ber of points but the Reg­gae Men en­joy a bet­ter net run rate, 1.810 com­pared to the lo­cals' +1.456. Should rain wash out tonight's match, then Ja­maica would go through as group lead­ers, with T&T sec­ond. If the semi­fi­nal is washed out, win­ners of each group would move on to con­test the fi­nals.

With this in mind, man­ag­er of the T&T team Col­in Bor­de says that his team will be go­ing all out to win their game tonight against Ja­maica. "The rain has def­i­nite­ly put a dif­fer­ent an­gle on every­thing now. We will need to win our group in or­der to be safe, if the rain plays a big hand. At the end of the day we have no con­trol of the el­e­ments but what we know is that the drainage at the Queen's Park Oval is mag­nif­i­cent, so play would be pos­si­ble if the rain ceas­es." Look­ing at his team Bor­de said there will be no let­ting up, as they are go­ing for a win against the Ja­maicans. "We have won both our games thus far and we want to con­tin­ue our win­ning ways, as we move for­ward. All the guys are fit and ready and we have been lucky enough to get in some time in the mid­dle at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre (NCC).

"As we have said be­fore we go in­to games think­ing it is a fi­nal and I am con­fi­dent that the boys will come good against the Ja­maicans." Left hand­ed bats­man Dar­ren Bra­vo is ex­pect­ed to play his first game in the tour­na­ment at the ex­pense of William Perkins. The se­lec­tors may al­so toy with the idea of bring­ing in West In­dies 'A' all rounder Im­ran Khan for his na­tion­al T20 de­but. Ja­maica on the oth­er hand is not sure whether their dev­as­tat­ing bats­man Chris Gayle will be avail­able for the match. Gayle in­jured his groin in the open­ing match against the Lee­wards and has since been in-ac­tive. He un­der­went an MRI scan yes­ter­day and skip­per Tamar Lam­bert was ex­pect­ed to have a chat with him last night to de­cide on his avail­abil­i­ty.

Lam­bert said yes­ter­day that Gayle is un­cer­tain for the game but is sure to be avail­able for the semis. "I will have a chat with Chris to de­ter­mine his avail­abil­i­ty for the match but I am sure he will be ready for the semis. Trinidad is a very good team and they know how to play T20 crick­et. We have beat­en them at home be­fore in the longer ver­sion and I don't see why we can­not de­feat them in the T20. They are dif­fi­cult to beat at home but we are hope­ful to get past them and fin­ish as group lead­ers." Cana­da will meet the Lee­wards in a bot­tom of the ta­ble clash in the first game at 4 pm.

Teams

T&T: Daren Gan­ga (capt), Samuel Badree, Adri­an Barath, Dwayne Bra­vo, Dar­ren Bra­vo, Kevon Coop­er, Sher­win Gan­ga, Im­ran Khan, Dave Mo­hammed, William Perkins, Kieron Pol­lard, De­nesh Ramdin, Lendl Sim­mons and Navin Stew­art.

Ja­maica: Tamar Lam­bert (capt), Niki­ta Miller, Carl­ton Baugh, David Bernard, Odean Brown, Chris Gayle, Wavell Hinds, Dan­za Hy­att, Xavier Mar­shall, Bren­ton Parch­ment, An­drew Richard­son, An­dre Rus­sell, Mar­lon Samuels and Kr­ish­mar San­tok­ie.