Vin­ode Mam­chan

Man­ag­er of the T&T Red Steel Col­in Bor­de says that his team has the best chance of win­ning the up­com­ing Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) T20 tour­na­ment.

Bor­de said giv­en the mix of the play­ers avail­able in his squad he sees no rea­son why they can't go on to win the in­au­gur­al tour­na­ment. "We in T&T know the T20 brand very well and al­though the team has a num­ber of play­ers who are not from this coun­try, the core is re­al­ly from here and this is a good start.

"We al­so have some very good in­ter­na­tion­al and re­gion­al picks and this gives us a good chance in the tour­na­ment. Look­ing around the league all the teams are ba­si­cal­ly around the same strength and the team that wants it the most will get it. I say that be­cause it is all about mind games and I know our boys and how hun­gry they are to get suc­cess.

"Just look at our cap­tain Dwayne Bra­vo, he is a very mo­ti­va­tion­al play­er and gets the men to play for him. Even when he is not cap­tain of T&T the play­ers would tell you that once he is around there is a dif­fer­ent vibe in the team. Added to this, he has loads of ex­pe­ri­ence in T20 crick­et hav­ing played it all over the world and al­so has a wealth of knowl­edge about the play­ers play­ing in the league.

"If you sit and talk to this man you would un­der­stand just how knowl­edge­able he is about the game and the play­ers in­volved. This is def­i­nite­ly a plus for us in this tour­na­ment."

The T&T Red Steel goes in­to camp next week and will be­gin prepa­ra­tions for their open­ing clash against the Ama­zon War­riors at the Prov­i­dence Sta­di­um in Guyana on Ju­ly 31. Three days lat­er they would clash with the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents in Bar­ba­dos, be­fore re­turn­ing home for their next clash against Ja­maica.

Bor­de said the clash with the Ama­zon War­riors who he de­scribed as a good team, will be very in­ter­est­ing. "The clash with the Ama­zon War­riors should be in­ter­est­ing, as there are a num­ber of T&T play­ers in their line-up. We will be com­ing up against T&T reg­u­lar skip­per De­nesh Ramdin, Lendl Sim­mons, William Perkins and Sunil Nar­ine, so that should be re­al­ly in­ter­est­ing. How­ev­er, we are con­fi­dent of com­ing out on top and get­ting a win­ning start to the tour­na­ment."