T&T will be look­ing to take home the ti­tle in the third and fi­nal round of the Crick­et West In­dies Ris­ing Stars Un­der-17 Men’s Two-Day Cham­pi­onships against the Wind­ward Is­lands at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre in Bal­main, Cou­va start­ing Wednes­day at 10 am.

In the pre­vi­ous match at the Pow­er­Gen Pe­nal Sports Club be­tween the T&T and Ja­maican, the match end­ed in a draw. The Ja­maicans won the toss and elect­ed to bat first, with top scor­er David De­war scor­ing 41 from 81 de­liv­er­ies. Ja­maica end­ed the first day with a score of 179 all out in 88 overs. Top wick­et-tak­er for T&T, Aneal Rooplal, got him­self four wick­ets for 56.

In re­sponse, T&T put up a fight as they con­clud­ed with a score of 197 all out in 84.4 overs. Bren­dan Boodoo con­tributed 31 of those runs along­side Alvin Son­ny’s 29. Ja­maica’s top wick­et-tak­er De­mar­co Scott got three wick­ets for 17 runs.

Head coach Rayad Em­rit feels con­fi­dent ahead of T&T’s U-17s, fi­nal last two-day match, say­ing: “It’s a very im­por­tant game and we are in a very good po­si­tion to take the ti­tle.”

De­spite Fa­reez Ali’s ab­sence in the sec­ond round and no bowl­ing ac­tion from him in the first round, Em­rit did con­firm that the skip­per trained with the team yes­ter­day and is back to full fit­ness.

“He is back to full fit­ness now. He had some breath­ing prob­lems. We didn’t want to take the chance to play him in the sec­ond game,” said Em­rit, who ex­pects the youth team to fin­ish strong.

“It’s a very tal­ent­ed bunch of guys and it will be the ic­ing on the cake if we could take home the ti­tle.”

In oth­er match­es, the Lee­ward Is­lands takes on Ja­maica over at Gilbert Park in Cal­i­for­nia and Bar­ba­dos goes head-to-head with Guyana at the In­shan Ali Park in Preysal.

(With re­port­ing by In­tern Vinaya Boodram)