T&T searching for answers to one-day flop

PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC):

Trinidadian cricket authorities met yesterday in an emergency session to investigate the national side's failed campaign in the WICB one-day championship.

Following the team's disappointing showing, Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board president Azim Bassarath said he would sit down with his executive to discuss the team's performance, and would also meet with captain Daren Ganga and the team management.

Seeking a hat-trick of titles, T&T started the tournament well with an eight-wicket win over Combined Campuses and Colleges, but then played to a no-result with Jamaica and lost their final game against the Windward Islands by eight wickets, to crash out of the tournament.

Very disappointed

"This performance has left us very disappointed indeed. We put everything in place for this team in terms of their build-up for this tournament and we would like to find out what went wrong," Bassarath said.

"The executive has been called in to come up with ideas to move forward from this point and we are going to deal with the matter. I also intend, as president of the board, to meet with the captain and management of the team to hear from them.

"I am also going to meet with every single player on that team and find out from them individually where they thought the team went wrong over the past year and what they think we can implement to lead to better performances.

"We have had a barren year with the senior team this year and something is not right. Something is missing and we are going to all lengths to find out what went wrong and what we can do to improve.

"We would like to now use this performance as a plus, to see where we are and to move the cricket forward."

Second crash

T&T's failure in the one-day tournament represented the second in four months, after they crashed out in the semi-finals of the Caribbean Twenty20 in July, after starting the tournament as favourites.

They were also disappointing in the four-day first-class season when they finished fourth behind eventual champions Jamaica.

Dudnath Ramkessoon, the convenor of selectors, said they would attempt to come up with answers to deal with the side's continuing failures.

"We are very disappointed in the performance of the team at the tournament and we cannot just sit by and let it pass. We are going to take a very dynamic approach to dealing with the problems we face and try to have our team winning again," Ramkessoon said.

"We went out there looking for the hat-trick and to come back after the prelims is not good at all. I am aware that the weather played a hand and from what the commentators said, there were two crucial umpiring errors, but this cannot take away from the fact that the team did not play as they could.

"It makes no sense saying that we have the strongest team on paper and yet we cannot win the tournament. We need to have players represent us, who can deliver when it matters."