Yorkshire could crush T&T hopes

October 10, 2012
Start time 1730 (1530 GMT)

Trinidad and Tobago bulldozed Jamaica in the final of the Caribbean T20 by 63 runs in Barbados.

Yorkshire finished runners-up in the Friends Life t20 in August, losing the final to Hampshire by ten runs in Cardiff.

Yorkshire's victory over Uva has taken them one win away to qualifying for the CLT20 but they will need to beat the Caribbean T20 winners Trinidad and Tobago to drive into the next stage. A loss would leave them waiting another day for their fate to be decided. T&T, arguably the strongest team in the qualifying group, have their work cut out. A defeat will send them home after just one match and their stay in the tournament would end up being shorter than their flights.

T&T have made a lot of the news in the build-up to the tournament. First, they expressed dissatisfaction after being put into a qualifying group even though they finished as the winners of the Caribbean T20 twice in two years. The second issue, that of losing their players to IPL teams, kept the team on tenterhooks for sometime till after a few rounds of wrangling, Kieron Pollard, Dwayne Bravo and Sunil Narine opted for their IPL teams. But can the performance of the national team inspire the weakened regional champions?

Pollard and Bravo topped batting and bowling charts for T&T in this year's Caribbean T20, but the squad still has four players from the World T20 winning West Indies team. They are led by Denesh Ramdin, and have Darren Bravo, Samuel Badree and Ravi Rampaul, with the latter two having played key roles in West Indies' successful campaign. Another player whose performance will be under the scanner for the team's and his own good is Kevon Cooper, who has played in T20 leagues around the world on the promise of his potential, but is yet to prove his talent.

Yorkshire failed to settle at the start of their match against Uva, who had a strong Powerplay against some wayward bowling that included seven wides. They got better with the ball as the innings went on and will hope to have settled and able to get off to a better side. With the bat, they are without David Miller, their match-winning against Uva, so one or more of the rest of the order needs to play the big innings, preferably one of the top order - captain Andrew Gale, Phil Jaques or Joe Root.

Ravi Rampaul produced the ball of the tournament in the World Twent20 final against Sri Lanka on a pitch which didn't have much in it for fast bowlers. In South Africa, however, he will pose considerable threat on fresher, faster pitches against lesser batsmen. Rampaul was the most economical bowler for T&T in the Caribbean T20, with an economy of 4.23 runs-per-over, and his seven wickets came at an average of 14.42.

Right-arm fast-medium bowler Moin Ashraf played his first season of Twenty20 cricket for Yorkshire this summer and was their second-most successful bowler with 15 wickets, behind Mitchell Starc. In Starc's absence, the 20-year old Ashraf will be key to Yorkshire's chances. He was the pick of the seamers against Uva with 2-29 in his four overs.

"The most pleasing thing about today is that we weren't at our best so there is room for improvement. We were probably at about 70 or 80 percent."
Yorkshire captain Andrew Gale assess his sides performance against Uva.