Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Red Force has placed added pres­sure on them­selves ahead of to­day's start in the fi­nal round of the West In­dies Cham­pi­onships against Guyana Hap­py Ea­gles, with a sub­par per­for­mance against the Ja­maican Scor­pi­ons last week, los­ing by over 200 runs.

It was a match that the T&T team would love to for­get but one from which I can on­ly hope they learn the many harsh lessons thought.

Let us start with the team se­lec­tion, I am told that the se­lec­to­r­i­al team is as fol­lows: Gibran Mo­hammed, De­onar­ine Deyal, Frank Sim­mons, Ra­jen­dra Man­galie, Rayad Em­rit (coach), and Joshua Da Sil­va (cap­tain).

And for me, this is where we went wrong, this by far too much per­sons to pick a start­ing XI if in­deed this is true, as this means there are six per­sons to pick 11 play­ers and even if it was 14 play­ers this is still too much per­sons in­volved in team se­lec­tion and pos­si­ble vot­ing on play­ers, which may ex­plain a lot if the above is true.

I be­lieve the cap­tain and the coach should se­lect the start­ing 11. How­ev­er, here is where it gets rather in­ter­est­ing, as I dis­tinct­ly re­call that Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) is­sued a list­ing of all the squads of 14 play­ers by Tues­day (the day be­fore the match) but in the case of T&T, there was a state­ment that this was not yet fi­nalised (my words).

So, there is a sense that there was some ap­par­ent in­de­ci­sion in nam­ing the fi­nal 14 for T&T, which is strange if in­deed that was a re­al­i­ty as we all knew that the lead­ing West In­di­an fast bowl­ing pair of Jay­den Seales and An­der­son Phillips would be ab­sent be­cause of over­seas com­mit­ments. There­fore, when the fi­nal 11 was se­lect­ed, there were more an­swers than ques­tions raised, giv­en the fact that over the last three match­es in par­tic­u­lar, cap­tain Joshua Da Sil­va had been vir­tu­al­ly car­ry­ing the bat­ting with three cen­turies as well as oth­er crit­i­cal in­nings and there­fore log­ic sug­gest­ed that if you lose two high-qual­i­ty bowlers, who can­not be re­placed, then com­bined with the re­cent fragili­ty in the bat­ting de­part­ment, an ex­tra bats­man and a bowler can be the re­place­ment. In­stead, it ap­pears that sort of analy­sis was not con­sid­ered by the wise men of se­lec­tors.

Both Shan­non Gabriel who cap­tured wick­ets and Ter­rance Hinds were se­lect­ed as the re­place­ments. This I be­lieve was an er­ror of judge­ment and there are fur­ther ques­tions as to why Jyd Goolie, who apart from Ja­son Mo­hammed (3 cen­turies) and Da Sil­va (3 cen­turies), is the on­ly oth­er bats­man with a cen­tu­ry when he bat­ted at num­ber three, was not con­sid­ered. When Amir Jan­goo re­turned, he was in­sert­ed in­to that num­ber three spot and Goolie was forced to open the in­nings and he failed in the one try he had and has not been re­in­stat­ed. Giv­en that Jan­goo has strug­gled and at the top of the or­der there have been in­con­sis­ten­cies, Goolie’s non-se­lec­tion shows that the se­lec­tors had a brain fade mo­ment, I just won­der if it is all of them or a few.

How­ev­er, here is where I have to call to ac­count the coach, I just have to ques­tion that if the ex­pe­ri­enced vet­er­an David Fur­longe was around could any­one dic­tate to him which team or play­er to se­lect, so I am hop­ing that Rayad Em­rit is set­ting his own guide­lines be­cause in the end he will be the one judged. We all know that Mervyn Dil­lon car­ried T&T in­to sec­ond po­si­tion but was still re­lin­quished of his post as coach.

And while I have no­ticed a change in Em­rit since he has be­come the coach of the team, I hope that he is us­ing all of his knowl­edge and his in­ten­si­ty in a pos­i­tive way be­cause some­times to get your own way, may ap­pear as ar­ro­gance but once he does not alien­ate per­sons, and re­sults jus­ti­fy his de­ci­sion, his ground which may now be shaky will not be­come sink­ing sand. Em­rit must trust him­self but he must al­so lis­ten and not be self-mo­ti­vat­ed on­ly but al­so in dri­ving for suc­cess, ac­knowl­edge a lev­el head ap­proach.

A win against Guyana would re­move all of the sus­pi­cions over team se­lec­tion and team uni­ty, so let us hope that Em­rit can en­sure that the team se­lect­ed to­day, is our best team for the cir­cum­stances and con­di­tions at the Queen's Park Oval (St Clair, Port-of-Spain), some have sug­gest­ed that oth­er ex­pe­ri­ence play­ers should be added to this young team, but over­all I can on­ly sug­gest the likes of Goolie and Tion Web­ster who are home grown Queen's Park play­ers will know ever blade of grass and can be es­sen­tial in the tense at­mos­phere ex­pect­ed in this fi­nal de­cider.

It is time to fight back, Red Force and re­turn to the mind­set and pos­i­tive crick­et that set the path­way for se­ri­ous op­ti­mism in March.

My fi­nal thought is that I hope that Em­rit would have con­sult­ed the wily vet­er­an David Fur­longe (Queen's Park coach) for some added ad­vice, there is noth­ing wrong in learn­ing from your el­ders.

Let’s do it– RED FORCE, let's de­liv­er this Cham­pi­onship with a win over Guyana Hap­py Ea­gles.