BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC) – Jamaica Tallawahs head coach Junior Bennett says it will be important for his side to make a winning start to the 2015 Caribbean Premier League, when they face reigning champions Barbados Tridents here Tuesday night.
The Chris Gayle-led Tallawahs open their campaign against the Tridents who raised the curtain on the tournament last Saturday by trouncing last year’s losing finalists, Guyana Amazon Warriors, by 49 runs at Kensington Oval.
Bennett, in his first year as head coach, told reporters here Monday that the Tallawahs did not want to find themselves too far behind early on and therefore were focusing on picking up early victories.
“In any competition you want to get off to a winning start, you don’t want to play what we call catch-up cricket,” Bennett said.
“You just want to go out there in front and remain in front and based on the format of the competition whereby the team that tops the group stage will go straight to the final, you would want to do that instead of going into the playoffs.”
He continued: “Last year we stumbled because we needed a win from two games and lost both games and in the end, the net run rate really cost us because if you look back at last year, all four top teams ended with the same amount of points in the preliminaries. It is extremely important that we start on the right footing this year.”
When the two teams met last year in St Kitts, Tridents crushed the Tallawahs by 88 runs in a lopsided encounter.