Newly appointed head coach of the Trinbago Knight Riders, Imran Jan, is anticipating an intense Caribbean Premier League (CPL) season even as the team prepares for its title defence.
Jan, who has been with the franchise as assistant coach since its inception said he was excited to take on the new role beginning with his first assignment against Guyana Amazon Warriors on August 26.
“Always excited to play against Guyana, it’s always a rivalry that we look forward to. We had the better of them last year but that is done and dusted. It’s a new season and it’s going to be challenging and it’s a pretty new venue with regards to what it poses for us so we are excited for it and the guys are up for the challenge,” Jan stated.
The head coach added that the backroom staff was up for the challenge with the tournament spanning just around three weeks.
“It’s going intense. It’s something we are conscious off as staff and not only coaching but backroom staff with regard to therapy and stuff because we all know how high intensity games are with regards to recovery, recovery is going to be very important, squad rotation and depth on bench…it’s something we are aware of and we’ve got to manage players properly,” he said.
With preparation a key component to Jan’s plans, he revealed that most of the squad are in St. Kitts with captain, Kieron Pollard and vice-captain Sunil Narine arriving recently along with Colin Munro and Ali Khan. Jayden Seales and Yashir Shah are the only two players left to join the squad and will do so at the conclusion of the ongoing Test series against West Indies and Pakistan.
“Overall the preparations have started off fantastic for us. We’ve had as usual, built a very good vibes in the camp, good energy and so far we’ve had a lot of activities. We’ve had a practice session so the guys are in good spirits and we are up for it,” Jan reckoned.
The former West Indies `A’ team player gave an insight into the team’s plan to equal their unblemished campaign last season with a bit of analysis on Warner Park, which is set to feature all 33 matches of the tournament.
“We all know the venue has two relatively straight boundaries that are relatively short, two, there is a wind factor going across the field so that is two things we have to pay attention to,” he detailed.
Jan continued, “The wickets are normally good cricket wickets and our preparation would have taken these things into consideration so specifically speaking we will have bowlers specifically bowling on certain ends, guys hitting to the wind, not letting guys hit too straight so we will probably have to pull back the lengths so those are the conversations we already had or continue to have with regards to the venue, we all know its high scoring mostly here in St. Kitts so we are conscious of that,” he declared.
Full squad: Kieron Pollard (C), Lendl Simmons, Jayden Seales, Ali Khan, Ravi Rampaul, Khary Pierre, Sunil Narine, Colin Munro, Anderson Phillip, Tion Webster Akeal Hosein, Isuru Udana, Leonardo Julien, Yasir Shah, Denesh Ramdin, Darren Bravo.
