Barbados Tridents captain Jason Holder has cautioned against panic following his side’s defeat to St Lucia Stars last Friday and said they have already trained their focus on Wednesday’s clash with Jamaica Tallawahs in Lauderhill, Florida.
Tridents won their opening game against Guyana Amazon Warriors in Georgetown by 30 runs but then found themselves outplayed by the Stars to go down by 38 runs at the Darren Sammy Cricket Ground in Gros Islet last Friday, chasing a massive 227 for victory.
Holder said despite the defeat, Tridents were still in great spirits especially since they were just two games into a long 10-game campaign in the preliminary round of the Hero Caribbean Premier League.
“It was a tough loss but it’s still early days in the tournament. It’s only our second game,” an upbeat Holder said.
“We’ve obviously got some areas that we need to tighten up on and I don’t think we executed as well as we probably wanted to. We bowled too many boundaries up front and it was hard to pull that momentum back after they gathered the momentum.
“Credit must go to St Lucia, they played a really good game but yes, it’s still early days for us. There’s no need to panic, we’ve got lots of games left. There’s one more game before we head home and hopefully, we can win that game going back into Barbados.”
Tridents will take on Jamaica Tallawahs at the Central Broward Regional Park Stadium in Lauderhill, looking to take advantage of their opponents’ recent losing form at the venue.
However, Holder said it was important his side brushed up in all departments if they were to pull off their second win of the tournament.
“That seems to be a pretty good wicket as well so we’ve got to be very precise with our plans in terms of our bowling,” Holder pointed out.
“I think once we restrict teams for under 200 runs, it’s easy to chase from there but we’ve got to do the work. We still have to go out there and see how the pitch looks and then make the final assessment about the team combination.”
Tridents boast a strong batting lineup with the likes of veteran Dwayne Smith, along with Australian Steve Smith, South African Hashim Amla, New Zealander Martin Guptill and Test star Shai Hope, all featuring together this season.
And with this type of quality, Holder said he backed Tridents to chase down big targets.
“I think we’ve got what it takes to chase down these totals, but it just didn’t work out for us [against St Lucia Stars],” he explained.
“We needed a really good start . . . but we’ve got a lot of firepower in the hatch. We just need to pull it all together. We did it quite nicely in Guyana, but we weren’t quite able to do it against St Lucia.”
Tridents play their first home game at Kensington Oval this Saturday, August 25, against St Kitts and Nevis Patriots, who are headlined by T20 superstar opener Chris Gayle. (CPL)
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