Trinidad and To­ba­go Red Force mid­dle or­der bats­man Ja­son Mo­hammed de­scribed his team's tri­umph in the CG Unit­ed Su­per 50 fi­nal to seal its 14th ti­tle as emo­tion­al, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter hear­ing the neg­a­tive re­ac­tions of the team se­lec­tion be­fore the se­ries bowled off.

At 37 years, Mo­hammed has been sin­gled out as one of the ‘old men’ in re­gion­al crick­et by many in­side and out­side of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Some have even sug­gest­ed that the lo­cal team, which al­so boasts Kjorn Ot­t­ley (33), Dar­ren Bra­vo (34) and Shan­non Gabriel (35), as tak­ing younger play­ers' spots.

But af­ter be­ing crowned the re­gion’s best 50-over team on Sat­ur­day evening, the for­mer West In­dies cap­tain ad­mit­ted the team stuck to­geth­er de­spite the neg­a­tiv­i­ty from the crick­et pub­lic.

“Of course, there's no bet­ter way we could have an­swered (crit­i­cism), ob­vi­ous­ly win­ning a tour­na­ment and do­ing it un­beat­en, and some of the guys we've men­tioned have got the most wick­ets, most runs, best field­s­men, so there's no bet­ter way we could have done that,” said Mo­hammed who scored heav­i­ly dur­ing the lo­cal crick­et sea­son in 2023 for Pow­er­gen Sports, and re­mained con­sis­tent through­out the tri­al match­es.

He ad­mit­ted there will come a time when he and his peers will have to call time on their Red Force ca­reer.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly it has a time for all of us to go, but I think in sports now it's de­vel­oped so much and there's so much things hap­pen­ing that there's no longer an age brack­et,” said Mo­hammed.

“Once your body is fit, and ob­vi­ous­ly the main thing is per­for­mance, I don't see why peo­ple want us to leave the are­na, yes, we'll have to leave one day and younger guys will have to take our place, but peo­ple must al­so re­mem­ber this is our life and this is our job, we have bills and fam­i­ly to take care of as well, so it's no bet­ter way for us to do it.

“It's very emo­tion­al for us be­cause of those sort of things be­ing said about us,” Mo­hammed con­tin­ued. “There was no point in time we were un­der pres­sure by it, but we were just hap­py to do it for our coun­try, our crick­et board, our se­lec­tors, and most im­por­tant­ly our cap­tain and coach who had to sit up a lot from all the noise com­ing from out­side, so cred­it must go to our coach (David Fur­longe) a lot and I'm very hap­py for him that we could have done it for him.”

Mo­hammed al­so an­nounced that he has called time on his in­ter­na­tion­al ca­reer, af­ter play­ing 36 One Day In­ter­na­tion­als and nine T20 in­ter­na­tion­als for the West In­dies.

He said, “I got in­to the Leg­ends League in In­dia, so hence the rea­son why I had to make my an­nounce­ment as soon as pos­si­ble, so that was the rea­son for it be­ing an­nounced be­fore the game.”

How­ev­er, Mo­hammed, who has scored 3,608 List A runs and 4,433 first class runs for the Red Force will con­tin­ue to rep­re­sent the coun­try for an­oth­er two years.

“I think I'm 37 now, so be­ing 38, mov­ing in­to 39 at that time, I think it would be a good time to walk away. Ob­vi­ous­ly, I have some per­son­al things still I want to achieve per­son­al­ly for my­self, and I feel like I can just help the younger guys de­vel­op and get bet­ter, so when my­self and most of the se­nior guys move away, we'll still be a pret­ty good place in terms of Trinidad and To­ba­go crick­et.”

The Red Force de­feat­ed the Lee­ward Is­lands Hur­ri­canes by sev­en wick­ets un­der Duck­worth-Lewis-Stern at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba, San Fer­nan­do on Sat­ur­day night to win their first CG Unit­ed Su­per 50 ti­tle since 2021.