Spin­ner Im­ran Khan will skip­per the T&T Red Force team in the up­com­ing Su­per50 Cup, which takes place in Trinidad and To­ba­go and St Kitts and Nevis be­tween No­vem­ber 6 and De­cem­ber 1.

Khan, fresh off rep­re­sent­ing the Ja­maica Tallawahs in the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League, was con­firmed as skip­per by the T&T Crick­et Board yes­ter­day, as it an­nounced a squad which is a shad­ow of the one that made the se­mi-fi­nals of the tour­na­ment a year ago. In the 2018 edi­tion of the com­pe­ti­tion, the likes of Dwayne Bra­vo, Ravi Ram­paul, Sunil Nar­ine and Rayad Em­rit were some of the names rep­re­sent­ing T&T.

How­ev­er, with the West In­dies’ se­ries against Afghanistan run­ning con­cur­rent­ly with the Su­per50 Cup, the likes of Lendl Sim­mons, Evin Lewis and De­nesh Ramdin would not have been avail­able for se­lec­tion.

How­ev­er, out of form bats­man Dar­ren Bra­vo has been se­lect­ed al­though there are lin­ger­ing con­cerns about his fit­ness.

Head coach Mervyn Dil­lon al­so yes­ter­day told the T&T Guardian the left-han­der wasn’t giv­en the cap­tain­cy to al­low him to fo­cus on his bat­ting.

He said, “Bra­vo fin­ished the tour­na­ment (Caribbean Pre­mier League) with an in­jury and we’re still not sure in terms of his fit­ness how he’s go­ing to come out. He told me he would be ready.

“Com­ing back in­to some crick­et where he has strug­gled for a while, I think you don’t want to put that added pres­sure on him. You want him to go out there and play his crick­et and get back the form that we all know he is ca­pa­ble of.”

Yan­nick Ot­t­ley will be Khan’s deputy, as the likes of Kyle Hope, Je­re­my Solozano and Ja­son Mo­hammed will be the main bats­men on the team. Akeal Ho­sein and Jon-Russ Jages­sar have al­so been se­lect­ed in the spin de­part­ment. Tion Web­ster, who wasn’t se­lect­ed by the Bar­ba­dos Pride fran­chise, has al­so se­cured a loan move and will play for the Red Force.

Com­ment­ing on the squad, Dil­lon said, “Un­for­tu­nate­ly, with the time and the end­ing of the CPL and fi­nan­cial re­stric­tions with the board, we weren’t able to do as much as I would have want­ed. Some guys that were left out were dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions that we had to make but when you look at the squad, it’s a very good squad.”

The for­mer West In­dies fast-bowler is al­so back­ing his side to come good in the tour­na­ment.

“I think we have as good a chance as many. For me, tak­ing over the team, one of the things I pin­point­ed in terms of the lev­el of fit­ness, I think we did some work with that and we have most of our play­ers up to the mark that is re­quired, al­though I think it has to be pushed a lot fur­ther.”

As the Red Force heads in­to their first match against the Vol­ca­noes on No­vem­ber 7, Dil­lon wants every­one fo­cused on the same mis­sion.

“The idea of get­ting the team to be pulling in one di­rec­tion is the chal­lenge as coach. If we can cre­ate that team unit then we will do much bet­ter and that is my fo­cus. The guys are quite keen. They have shown the ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the way I want to do things go­ing for­ward and build­ing that trust­ing en­vi­ron­ment,” he said.

T&T have been drawn in Group B along with last year’s beat­en fi­nal­ists Guyana Jaguars, West In­dies Emerg­ing Play­ers, Wind­ward Is­lands Vol­ca­noes and the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca (USA).

T&T RED FORCE SQUAD:

Im­ran Khan (Cap­tain)

Yan­nick Ot­t­ley (V-Capt)

Kyle Hope

Je­re­my Solozano

Ja­son Mo­hammed

Tion Web­ster

Odean Smith

An­der­son Phillip

Steven Kat­wa­roo

Jon Ross Jagge­sar

Kea­gan Sim­mons

Akeil Ho­sein

Dar­ren Bra­vo

Isa­iah Ra­jah

Mervyn Dil­lon (Coach)

David Fur­longe (Man­ag­er)