Guyana’s Linden Cricket Festival off

TRINIDAD and Tobago’s trip to Guyana for the Linden Cricket Festival has been postponed due to inclement weather in Guyana.

This was revealed by manager/coach of the team Roland Sampath yesterday. The West Indies Under-19 manager said: “The weather in Guyana is not good at the moment and from their experience of the elements, the businessmen from Linden have decided to call off the tour.” A group of businessmen from the Linden area had proposed a five-match series between Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana to revive cricket in the area. The popularity of the game has been on the decline in Linden for the past few years and the business people formed a group to revive the sport in the area that produced West Indian player Basil Butcher. However Sampath explained: “They have decided to postpone the series until January but this is not ideal for us, so we will miss the festival all together. “It will be too close to the Carib Beer Series for the players to be playing this limited overs tournament. We would prefer if they can stay at home and get involved in the trials.”

The Pizza Hut Gerry Gomez North/South Classic will be played on January 2, 3, 4 and 5 at the Queen’s Park Oval and the first match of the Carib Beer series takes place on January 9. Meanwhile, the national cricketers have been in training at the National Cricket Centre for the past three weeks, but Sampath said they are just doing physicals at the moment. “The boys are just working out at the moment and apart from the little knock here and there they have been working very hard on their fitness.” The Trinidad and Tobago players will have three trial matches before the series gets going. The first will be played from December 4 to 7, the second from December 18-21 and third is a two-day affair on December 28 and 29.