It has been announced that the Trinidad and Tobago Red Force team has to include newcomers, because of the present tour of the West Indies side in the two-Test series in Pakistan.
Opportunities knock for the youngsters to gain the experience necessary to play first-class cricket. This, of course, will not only affect the Red Force, but also the other seven teams that will be participating in the West Indies Cricket Championship.
The first game for the TT Red Force is on January 29, when they come up against the Combined Campuses and Colleges at the Brian Lara Stadium in Tarouba. It’s a day/night pink-ball encounter that starts at 1 pm, scheduled to end each night at 8 pm.
[caption id="attachment_1135376" align="alignnone" width="1024"] South batsman Jason Mohammed plays a pull shot for six while North wicketkeeper Antonio Gomez looks on during day three of the Namalco/TTCB Senior North South Classic at the Brian Lara Cricket Academy on January 11, in Tarouba. - Photo by Daniel Prentice[/caption]
These situations should create openings for young cricketers and others who may have been regularly on the fringe of selection, but never cemented a place in their territories’ teams. The selectors have a tough task on their hands to identify those who are worthy of the opportunity to become international cricketers.
The big problem is that those players with talent and backed by performance are soon snatched up by the world’s super-rich franchises for their own purposes, at enormous fees that the players can’t refuse and with which their native country, which bred them to be the cricketers they have become, cannot compete, and thus eventually lose them.
The franchises should be made to pay a fee for the use of the player, for no one wants to deprive the cricketer of earnings, which are a just reward for his ability and the hard work used to develop it. Nevertheless, his club and coaches should also be recognised.
Actually, when it first began in India around 2008, the Board of Control for Cricket in India, quite fairly, paid fees to Cricket West Indies for the West Indian players who were contracted, and insisted the local club that bred the player should also be rewarded. This is still being done.
I want to commend Jason Mohammed, the former national and West Indian batsman, for his superb double century for South in the recent North/South Classic. He would be the ideal player to assist some of these youngsters in how to approach their game in a mature fashion.
Mohammed, one would recall, also was the captain of the West Indies team in a limited-over series in Bangladesh a few years ago. That experience at international level would be a huge plus for him to be able to assist Bryan Charles, the captain of TT Red Force, when and where required, whether in team meetings or on the field of play.
If Mohammed could maintain his batting form as a lesson to the inexperienced batsmen in correct batsmanship, it would be a plus for the youths. He’s such a skilled player, who seems to be improving with age, like
