Omar Khan wants consistency from national cricketers

Manager of the senior Trinidad and Tobago cricket team, Omar Khan, said yesterday that he has been preaching consistency to the national cricketers with the hope that they make a change in time for the upcoming Carib Beer Series regional tournament. Khan’s comments come in the wake of the poor scores by batsmen at the final cricket trial played at the National Cricket Centre (NCC) over the weekend. Shazam Babwah’s XI had scores of 109 and 125 for nine wickets declared, while Imran Jan’s XI replied with 86 and 152 for six. This came after very heavy scoring in the previous trial where Jan’s XI totalled over 500 runs. “The bowlers bowled very well in the last trial and this is great to see but the batsmen played poorly. What we need in an ideal situation is for the batsmen and bowlers to click together on a consistent basis so that we can have a higher quality cricket and greater results,” the PowerGen engineer said.

The players trained yesterday and have been given a break today and tomorrow before the annual Pizza Hut Gerry Gomez North/South Cricket Classic gets going on Friday at the Queen’s Park Oval in Port-of-Spain. “In order to be successful you have to perform consistently well and we have been preaching that to the players ever since we began preparations for the Carib Beer Series and they must see to it that they make the change. “We have a very good chance of winning the series but the players must come good regularly. In order to improve their play we have initiated mental preparation sessions and the guys will continue to have these sessions until the series starts in January,” said Khan. Khan explained that the final squad of 13 players for the first match of the Carib Beer series against the Leeward Islands at Guaracara Park, Pointe-a-Pierre will be announced at the conclusion of the North/South Classic at the weekend. After this the 13 players go into a two-day camp at the Sir Frank Worrell Cricket Academy on January 6 and 7 before the first Carib Beer match.