“LCPL brings seriously contrasting fortunes and surprises!”

Aug 11, 2013 Sports

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Colin E. H. Croft
The colour has been dazzling, excitement electric and enjoyment all encompassing!
This weekend brings more in Limacol Caribbean Premier League 2013, but it is also time for even more serious cricket, with teams manipulating efforts to finish in top four positions!
After initial euphoria, all teams must now be sufficiently settled to be thinking of having their name(s) on that trophy for winning this initial competition.

There is nothing like being the first No. 1!
Barbados’ Tridents, surprisingly good so far, play Guyana’s Amazon Warriors at Queen Park Oval today (Sunday), an extremely crucial game for Tridents to defend its deserved 100% record.
Amazon Warriors, 2nd at the time of writing, will want to burst Tridents’ bubble, even as they hoped to have beaten the surprisingly lowly placed Trinidad & Tobago Red Steel last Friday.
In passing, Azim Bassarath, President of Trinidad & Tobago Cricket Board, recently, correctly, warned his administrators, officials and country that while T&T has done excellently in recent cricket tournaments regionally and world-wide, they should not be sitting on their laurels and congratulating themselves.
Reiterating that even harder work lies ahead, Bassarath has overseen the continued emergence of young cricketers who could go all the way to representing senior West Indies.
At the time, he was congratulating Trinidad & Tobago’s teams, in what he called a ‘special time’, for winning both 2013 Under 15 and Under 17 tournaments, continuing T&T’s winning tradition.
This bodes really well for T&T’s cricket, especially for the production line that could produce next generation West Indians players, to follow Kieron Pollard, Darren Bravo or Denesh Ramdin.
One of Bassarath’s lieutenants, Suruj Ragoonath, had an ill-fated entrance at representing West Indies eons ago as an opening batsman, but he is now proving to be a formidable administrator for his country, brilliant as Chief Executive Officer; a friendly, communicative and very helpful cricket professional!
So, in T-20 cricket, Trinidad & Tobago has achieved much, “Red Force” representing the Caribbean well at Champions League tournaments whenever they were West Indies’ cricketing diplomats.
T&T even had eight players in West Indies team which won ICC World T-20 competition last year.
But, what has gone wrong with its LCPL team, “Red Steel”, now in the cellar?
Even captain Dwayne Bravo does not know!
Recently, almost countermanding Bassarath’s salutations, Bravo lamented the fact that his Red Steel was disappointing its supporters.  More importantly, they must be disappointing themselves!
Ross Taylor, former New Zealand captain, still arguably its best batsman, has not hit his straps at all, scoring 02, 11, 31 in three games at time of writing.   Bravo himself has been similarly poor; 08, 05, 29.
Confirming Bassarath’s suggestion on T&T’s youth, Red Steel’s only fifty to date had come from 17 year old wicket-keeper, Nicholas Pooran.  He is taking any opportunity given to show-case his wares!
Contrast those stats to Barbados’ Trident, runaway leaders at what can be termed half-way point!
In four games to date, Tridents have gored and out-scored the opposition; 169-5, 146-8, 53-6, while winning that extremely low scoring game when Red Steel made only 52, and, in its most recent game, against St. Lucia’s Zouks, making the highest total of the tournament so far, 175-6.
Trident’s batting has been led by recently much maligned captain, Pollard, who is back on his patch in T-20’s, and has scored one of two fifties for his team, 61, along with Pakistan’s Shoaib Malik, whose 78 against Zouks, game No. 1, is the highest score so far.
Trident’s batting, generally, has been consistent.
Batting does normally win T-20’s, but Shakib al Hassan, Bangladesh’s former captain and its best all-rounder, has been mesmeric with his tantalizing slow left arm productions.
Few who witnessed it would ever forget Shakib’s contribution, and elation, his crowning moment as captain – 2nd Test – when Bangladesh beat a depleted West Indies, 2-0, in 2009.
Shakib’s astounding contributions in two Tests were 17, 30, 16, 96 not out, and 2-76, 3-39, 3-59, 5-70, easily “Man of the Series.”
He reminds some of late T&T and West Indies spinner Inshan Ali, who was quicker through the air, but like Shakib, bamboozled batsmen with extremely slow “china-men.”
Many a batsman perished to Inshan as have to Shakib.
To this day, you could still hear ghosts shouting from long-gone northern concrete stands at QPO; “You are drowning in honey.  There is always room in the air!”
Red Steel felt the magic of Shakib’s fingers with his phenomenal spell of 4-1-6-6!  Almost unbelievable!
Guyana too has been a surprising revelation.
Coach Roger Harper is a seriously tough task-master, but his team seems to be reacting well to his directives, winning their first two games before falling to Zouks.
Another Trinidad & Tobago “export”, Lendl Simmons, has carried Amazon Warrior’s batting; 42, 67 and 38 in three thrilling innings.
New Zealanders Martin Guptill and James Franklyn, and former West Indies captain, still such an intelligent batsman and cricketer, Ramnaresh Sarwan, have also helped keep Amazon Warriors’ batting together.
Yes, this weekend’s games have much to play for.  Which teams come out ahead will be interesting.  Enjoy!

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