Noel Guillen Under-21 cricket final at Oval

This year’s Noel Guillen Under-21 cricket final will be played today at the Queen’s Park Oval in Port-of-Spain from 10.30 am. Two of the more talented teams on the local cricketing landscape —- W-Connection Wanderers and Tile It Central Sports —- will trade skills for the biggest title in local youth cricket. Tile It Central Sports will start as favourites but will find it extremely difficult to get past a Wanderers outfit that has a number of young promising players. The majority of the Wanderers team is playing in the Carib National League Division One competition. Vonney Roberts, manager of the Central Sports team speaking to Newsday yesterday said : “Of course we are very confident going into this battle. We have never won the national Under-21 cricket title and we are going all out to correct that statistic,” he said.

“A lot of people have made the comment that we don’t have a proper youth development programme at our club and that we are only concerned with contracting players. Well this should send a message to them that they know nothing of what they are saying. We have always produced good youth players and our coach is wonderful with the youths.” St Mary’s school teacher Dasrath Maharaj is the coach of Tile It Central Sports.

“Maharaj has made a tremendous difference to our team since joining and taking the youths to the finals is just one of the milestones achieved so far,” he said. Wanderers will be out to claim their first trophy also and will be looking to go past the final hurdle to claim the title. Officials of the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board of Control (TTCBC) including Patrick Rampersad and Rambhai Patel as well as sponsor Jeffrey Guillen will  meet the players of both teams before the match.

U-21 PAST WINNERS
Year     Winner       Runner-up
2001     QPCC         PowerGen
2002     PowerGen   Clarke Road
2003     Preysal       QPCC