STAND-IN coach for the Trinidad and Tobago Red Force Rayad Emrit expects his players to soak up less dot balls and turn over the strike more often when they tackle the West Indies Academy Thursday in their fourth round CG United Super 50 Cup match at the Sir Frank Worrell Memorial Ground in St Augustine.
The Red Force lost their first match of the campaign against the Leeward Islands Hurricanes — a seven-wicket defeat — at the Brian Lara Cricket Academy Sunday. It was a record-breaking match that was dominated by the in-form Justin Greaves.
Greaves completed his third consecutive century of the tournament, an unbeaten 151 that powered the Hurricanes to victory after captain Joshua Da Silva’s team set them a 291 winning target. Greaves is the first player to achieve that feat in the history of regional one-day cricket.
Emrit, a former West Indies and national player, identified the inability to keep the scoreboard ticking as the main reason for the Red Force not posting a more challenging total.
“I thought we batted well in spurts,” he told the Express yesterday. “I thought in the middle overs we were a bit slow – overs 10-25. I don’t think that we rotated the strike enough. I thought we were in a good position to get over 300 runs, and I thought that is the period where we faltered,” added Emrit who commended the contributions of Amir Jangoo (96), Jason Mohammed (79 not out), and Tion Webster (60)
“But I thought that period from over 10-25 is where we lost momentum and we brought them back into the game. We were looking for anything over 300- I think if we had gotten 320 to 330 it would have been a different game.”
Skipper Da Silva concurred with his coach.
“ I don’t think we scored enough runs. I think 320 on that pitch at night would have given us more of a fighting total,” Da Silva said in a post match interview. “We saw the dew on the ball – it gets a bit more difficult – we didn’t do enough in the middle overs and we had a few too many dot balls. Probably our dot ball digit was a little too high. But that is something we can look forward to making better in the next game.”
Emrit commended Greaves and his opening partner Mikyle Louis for setting the foundation for the Hurricanes’ success.
Greaves, who had scores of 111 not out against the West Indies Academy and 112 against the Barbados Pride, continued his spectacular form in the tournament.
In a good display of 50-over batting, he didn’t strike a single six and yet had a strike rate of 117, while collecting 13 fours.
“(Their partnership) was really impressive. Yet again our bowlers in the Powerplay, we bowled decent for a bit – 59 in ten overs. But then they scored where they wanted to and not where we wanted them to and I think that was difference in the middle overs between the sides,” said Emrit. ”I think we could have tried different things against him (Greaves) to take him out of his comfort zone. I don’t think we did that regularly. We could have done a lot better.”
Looking forward to their game Thursday, Emrit said the team has agreed with the technical staff on the areas in which they faltered and the areas in need of improvement.
“Hopefully we can get it right,” Emrit noted. “It has been three games into the campaign and we won two of them and lost one. Four more games to go, so hopefully we can get things right. We need to understand and get it right in upcoming games before the knockout stage starts.”
Emrit added it was very important that the Red Force get back to winning against the WI Academy by employing the strategy of avoiding dot balls and maximising strike-rotation.
“So It is just for the guys to get in and mull over the ball a little more and take that approach. I think we (will) continue to get good scores and even better scores.”
Summarised scores:
T&T RED FORCE 291-6 (Amir Jangoo 96, Jason Mohammed 79 n.o., Tion Webster 60; Oshane Thomas 2/54)
vs LEEWARD ISLANDS HURRICANES 292-3 (47.3 overs) (Justin Greaves 151 n.o., Mikyle Louis 57).
—Hurricanes won by seven wickets.