As the new year is up­on us, so is the Caribbean crick­et sea­son with the vis­it­ing Irish here to test our im­prove­ment in the white ball game. As I pre­dict­ed, the West in­dies eas­i­ly swept them aside in the first ODI and un­less com­pla­cen­cy steps in, I ex­pect skip­per Kieron Pol­lard and his team to make a clean sweep of their op­po­si­tion.

Per­haps more im­por­tant­ly, Thurs­day will mark the start of the new Re­gion­al 4-Day Tour­na­ment and like all lo­cal crick­et fans, I am keep­ing my fin­gers crossed and hop­ing that with the start of a new decade, our Red Force team will be able to win the tour­na­ment. It is im­por­tant to note that we have not won since 2006 and the last few years have been noth­ing short of dis­as­trous.

It was re­cent­ly re­port­ed that the Pres­i­dent of the T&T Crick­et Board has heaped praise on his ex­ec­u­tive for get­ting new ini­tia­tives on board and that in­vestors are com­ing back in­to crick­et. In­ter­est­ing­ly, he men­tioned that the so-called “de­trac­tors” who were keen to hurt the board, didn’t care about our crick­eters and they suf­fered as a re­sult.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, I am not in­to pol­i­tics and I can on­ly judge what is placed in front of me. When I look back over the last 5 to six years, the plan­ning and struc­ture of our crick­et for tour­na­ments can on­ly be de­scribed as abysmal. We re­peat­ed­ly went in­to tour­na­ments with very lit­tle hope of win­ning them.

We kept los­ing year af­ter year and it was busi­ness as usu­al; per­haps hop­ing for di­vine in­ter­ven­tion and that one day we will sud­den­ly win the four-day tour­na­ment. Thank­ful­ly, some­one woke up and changes were made last year and al­though we did not win the tour­na­ment, there was a marked im­prove­ment in our game. I was keen to see some form of post mortem at the end of the re­gion­al se­ries last year, but there was none made pub­lic from my knowl­edge. I was in­ter­est­ed in know­ing how it can be pos­si­ble to de­feat the cham­pi­ons but fail mis­er­ably against some of the oth­er teams with far less abil­i­ty than ours.

In the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Su­per 50 tour­na­ment, we failed to reach the fi­nal, again, and when one re­vis­its the games, our field­ing, in par­tic­u­lar, our catch­ing was hor­ri­ble. We weren’t ag­gres­sive enough in the field and our bowlers at times seemed to have lost the plot. It ap­peared that there was not enough guid­ance on the field to gal­vanise the team when the chips were down. When you look at the body lan­guage of the West In­dies Emerg­ing play­ers com­pared to our team’s body lan­guage, one could eas­i­ly un­der­stand why the emerg­ing play­ers won.

Then, I had to lis­ten to an aw­ful ex­cuse about us not hav­ing fast bowlers and the coach not get­ting his way with the se­lec­tors. Oh, please give me a break. We played bad crick­et es­pe­cial­ly against the Lee­ward Is­lands Hur­ri­canes and we lost - sim­ple but true so stop the fool­ish ex­cus­es!

If I am to be­lieve the Pres­i­dent of the TTCB that crick­et is on the up, I ex­pect he would have giv­en all the re­sources need­ed for the team to do well and win the 2020 tour­na­ment. I see there were a cou­ple of tri­al match­es which is good but I am un­sure how many times the squad prac­tised to­geth­er out­side of the games to iron out all the flaws with both the bats­men and bowlers? What about our field­ing? Have we worked on our catch­ing both close to the bat and in the deep? I am hop­ing the board has been mon­i­tor­ing all of the work be­ing done by the tech­ni­cal staff as the buck stops with them.

The team it­self is loaded with tal­ent and with Dar­ren Bra­vo seem­ing­ly back to his best and en­joy­ing his crick­et once again, I am ex­pect­ing record-break­ing runs from him. Be­ing in­stalled as cap­tain will add to his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties but I an­tic­i­pate that he will adopt an ag­gres­sive na­ture to his cap­tain­cy. He must ac­cept noth­ing less than 100% from his charges and those who may have the tal­ent but fail to give 100%, in­vite them to watch from the stands.

Based on the North v South game and the tri­als, some play­ers have forced their way in­to the team. Young Isa­iah Ra­jah is a play­er I like. He ap­pears to have so much time to play the ball but he must turn half-cen­turies in­to hun­dreds; too many times he gets out in the sev­en­ties and eight­ies. Joshua Da Sil­va and Yan­nick Cari­ah are both ea­ger to do well and they know what the win­ning feel­ing is like hav­ing won the Su­per 50 tour­na­ment. Da Sil­va looks like one for the fu­ture and this tour­na­ment could be a turn­ing point in his ca­reer.

Cari­ah has to come good as he has been around for a long time; so too Kyle Hope who has rep­re­sent­ed the West In­dies but has failed to light up the re­gion­al se­ries. It is time he is giv­en an ul­ti­ma­tum to score heav­i­ly or the se­lec­tors may as well give the chance to a young­ster in Cephas Coop­er. Young open­er Je­re­my Solozano has al­so been knock­ing on the door and the team must turn good starts in­to big scores.

Bowl­ing maybe our weak link. I ex­pect Im­ran Khan will spear­head the at­tack with the oth­er spin­ners - Akeal Ho­sein and Bryan Charles. Ter­rance Hinds is an in­ter­est­ing se­lec­tion - he is ag­gres­sive with both bat and ball which is what I like, but he is raw at this lev­el and I ex­pect coach Mervyn Dil­lon to han­dle him as­tute­ly.

Can we win the tour­na­ment? Cer­tain­ly! We have the tal­ent but the tech­ni­cal staff must man­age the strengths and weak­ness­es of the team well. Our play­ers must show the fight and ag­gres­sion to win which has been ab­sent for some time.

Ed­i­tor’s note

The views ex­pressed in this col­umn are sole­ly those of the writer and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion of which he is a stake­hold­er.