ST. JOHN’S, Antigua, CMC- Much is at stake for player and country when the West Indies Cricket Board’s Regional Four-day First-class competition bowls off at three venues across the Caribbean today.
Jamaica’s quest to stretch their hold on the title for a seventh straight year and Christopher Barnwell’s mission to prove he is more than a T20 specialist are targets of the tournament’s newest edition.
But the new season will also be the platform on which triple T20 champions Trinidad and Tobago aim to transform a winning formula to a longer format.
Barbados face Jamaica at Kensington Oval in Barbados, Leeward Islands meet Guyana at the Vivian Richards Cricket Ground in Antigua, and Windward Islands play Combined Campuses & Colleges at the Beausejour Cricket Ground in St. Lucia.
The tournament is starting without the region’s leading players who are on duty for West Indies in Australia.
Jamaica has called up new players Andre McCarty, Yanique Elliott and Zeniffe Fowler to back the efforts of junior players Nkrumah Bonner, Jermaine Blackwood, Sheldon Cotterell and Jamie Merchant.
“We have a lot of youngsters in the team and so they just have to step up to the plate,” said head coach Junior Bennett.
“We are just hoping that the youngsters will go out there and put their best foot forward and play some good cricket for us”.
Jamaica has won all major regional cricket titles with one exception- the just ended Caribbean T20 tournament which has seen its last edition in its current format.
Tamar Lambert’s dreams of joining Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana as the only title holders faded to third place and now the Jamaican skipper wants to make amends.
“I am looking forward to this competition knowing that we disappointed the country in the Twenty20 competition,” said Lambert.
“This is another opportunity for us to really go out there and try and defend our titles”.
While Lambert leads his charges in a potentially grueling season Guyana’s Chris Barnwell, one of the fastest rising cricketers in the region wants to shrug off the tag of T20 specialist. Barnwell emerged from last month’s Caribbean T20 tournament as the leading scorer with 245 runs, took six wickets and was surprisingly overlooked for most valuable Player award.
“After getting a good start in the Caribbean T20, it’s important that I continue in the 4-Day and RS50 and that’s my main objective,” said Barnwell, who was recently auctioned to the Royal Challengers Bangalore for US $50,000.
“At the start of the year, one of my main goals was to make it back to the West Indies team, and after a good run in the CT20, I’ll be looking to do well and hopefully catch the eyes of the selectors for the upcoming series against Zimbabwe.”
Meantime, the triple T20 champions, Trinidad and Tobago, have been preparing themselves to compete in the longer format of the game by focusing on areas such as flexibility, proper shot selection, patience when batting and bowlers’ adherence to line and length.
“The cricketers have bought into that,” said Manager Omar Khan.
“We see it as one of the major factors in terms of us trying to win the four-day tournament”.
Trinidad and Tobago’s preparations would have been bolstered by three-day and T20 victories against the visiting Canadian National team.
As the curtain rises on the regional four-day competition much of the attention will focus on the son of one of the world’s leading cricketers.
Sixteen-year- old Tagenarine Chanderpaul, son of Shivnarine Chanderpaul, is set to emulate his father by making his first-class debut as a teenager when Guyana take on the Leeward islands on Saturday at the Antigua Recreation Ground.
The young Chanderpaul, described as being difficult to dislodge, is the lone new face on the Guyana squad and would be closely followed as he attempts to follow his father’s footsteps.
Matches are scheduled to start at 10 a.m. daily eastern Caribbean time.
