Captain Justin Jagessar and the Trinidad and Tobago U-17 cricket team have started preparations for the West Indies U-17 Cricket Championship and coach Rayad Emrit has high expectations for his side. The U-17 tournament will take place in Trinidad from July 17-28.
The former T&T Red Force captain, who was appointed coach of the U-17 team before the Covid-19 pandemic, said it was a difficult task to cut the squad and that some “really good players” would have missed the cut.
“First of all, I think it’s a really strong squad that we’ve selected and it’s taken us a while to get to this point because of the amount of talent around,” Emrit explained. “Some of the guys who were available last year were also available this year and that made it even more difficult and some really good guys were left out,” he added.
Asked about the assembled squad, Emrit said it was a “good all-round team” but he felt T&T’s strength would be the goal-directed scoring of Jagessar, Samir Saroop, Andrew Rambaran and Veeran Batchu. “I think our hitting is our strength which is good to see. We also have a lot of good all-rounders so hopefully we can put a lot of runs on the board and hopefully we can defend it,” said Emrit.
Emrit said that despite the bad weather recently, the team had started preparations and it was a good thing that many of the players had played cricket. “Our preparation started this week but due to the bad weather it has hampered us a bit, but some of the boys have been playing cricket for a while and some of them have also been involved in the T10 tournament recently and the U-19s; so it is positive that they have played cricket,” Emrit explained.
“Justin and Andrew as well as Jacen Agard played with the Under-19s so they have some experience playing with a lot of guys older than them and hopefully they can bring that wealth of experience to the team. Justin and Andrew have also done well. They did not participate alone. They have scored runs and taken wickets. Andrew also played in the last T10, so he knows what it’s like to be under pressure at any given time. Hopefully they can bring that experience to the team and the boys can feed off of them,” the U-17 coach added.
Emrit said he would like to play some practice matches against the U-19s so his players can train. “Match practice is always the best practice, so hopefully we can get some matches in the next eight to ten days,” he said. “The good thing about this team is that guys are willing to learn and I couldn’t ask for a better group of guys to start (practice). My goal is to lead the team to the title. I will do as much as I can off the field and prepare them as well as possible so that when they get on the field it will be easier. I’ll give them all the information I can, but when they get on the field, it’s up to them to give,” Emrit concluded.
T&T U17 SQUAD: Justin Jagessar (Captain), Luke Ali, Samir Saroop, Kavir Boodoosingh, Andrew Rambaran, Kyle Ramdoo, Orlando James, Verran Batchu, Abdullah Cambridge, Fareez Mohammed, Rikki Ragoonanan, Jacen Agard, Aaiden Kanhai, Kevin. Rayad Emrit (Coach), Rajendra Mangalie (Manager)
