Great catch: St Lucia Zouks captaiun Kevin Pietersen does well to hold on to this catch despite losing his balance to dismiss Jacques Kallis of the T&T Red Steel in their Caribbean Premier League match at the Queen’s Park Oval on Tuesday evening. The Zouks won by four wickets. —Photo: Anisto Alves
One fan has started an online petition for Dwayne Bravo to be sacked as Trinidad and Tobago Red Steel captain. He has so far received 33 backers, but Red Steel coach Simon Helmot will not be one of them.
Red Steel supporters were left frustrated on Tuesday night at the Queen’s Park Oval when all-rounder Bravo conceded 17 runs in the final over of the rain-affected Caribbean Premier League T20 match against the St Lucia Zouks to leave the T&T franchise with a four-wicket defeat and still planted at the bottom of the six-team table on five points.
Bravo’s side return to the Oval tonight to face Kieron Pollard’s Barbados Tridents needing a victory if they are to start pushing for a place in the semi-finals.
But yesterday, coach Simon Helmot defended his skipper’s use of himself in the final stages of games.
“The middle to back end has been his forte,” Helmot told the media at a pre-match press conference. “He’s made a career out of it; he’s been successful at it.
He added: “What I love about Dwayne is that he’ll always put himself in the hot seat. Yes the economy rate’s slightly higher than normal, we’d like to improve on that. He’ our highest wicket-taker with 11 wickets so he’s still very effective for us. His strike rate’s still very good.”
And despite the frustration of some fans with the Red Steel’s below-par displays in the CPL this season, Helmot was positive about the matches ahead, starting with tonight’s match.
“Our last match and this match we’ve really started to get some momentum and start to play some good cricket,” he said. Fortunately for us, we still have four matches to go, we still have the ability to get eight points, so we are only at the half-way point of our season so we’ve got lots of cricket to play and we need to get ourselves organised against probably one of the best teams in the competition. We need to be playing really well against them.”
The Red Steel coach was also “very encouraged” by the unbeaten 14 off eight balls from Darren Bravo who added 35 for the fifth wicket with brother Dwayne to get the Red Steel up to a competitive 90 for four in nine overs.
“We have some individuals that need to keep improving in performance with both bat and ball, but I’m confident we’ve got the players, we’re got the strategy and we’ve got the ability to keep performing well and being there at the business end.”
Meanwhile, Tridents skipper Pollard wants his top-of-the-table side to keep their focus as they try to seal an automatic berth to the final.
“This is not the time for experiments,” he said. “We try to go with the tried and tested. I think we have a very good bowling attack in terms of experience and international experience, so we just try to use that against Red Steel.”
First ball this evening, weather permitting is 8pm.