TRIDENTS medium pacer Rayad Emrit says that the Barbados franchise was caught off guard by the decision to let Australian all rounder Brad Hodge open the batting during the Amazon Warriors 15 run impaling on Saturday evening. Emrit told the media at the post game briefing he had indicated that their strategy relied on either getting wickets or stemming the run flow.
“We didn’t expect Brad Hodge to open the batting, that was something new for us and I’m sure they didn’t expect me to open the bowling as well. The two guys (Lendl Simmons and Hodge) that we really aimed for Denesh Ramdin you know can come and turn it up at any time as well. But as I said before, the wicket is not a stroke play and if we could contain them in the first 10 overs, anything like 10 (runs) in the last 10 would be difficult.”
When quizzed about their batting performance, the Tridents player indicated while 125 was defendable, they were not comfortable. “We weren’t totally satisfied we were looking about 140 but we had to adjust with the start that we got and we lost wickets at crucial times. There is never a good time to lose wickets but you know that it’s always difficult for batsmen who come in to get settled in the wicket. So 120 at the half, we were happy with it and we knew that if we got wickets early it was a wicket that was very difficult to come and get settled on but we were happy at half time at 125.”
On the Tridents secret to their overall performance throughout the Hero CPL, the pace man said that the retention of the core players from the 2014 unit was considered a major factor.
“Before the draft, Polly wanted the core players to be back with the tridents and you know during the tournament we lost Malik and Mendis again, so it’s been a bit up and down, hot and cold, for us but you know at the start of the tournament we had our core players and we started off at home and we got three victories and that set us off on a good foot and we sort of carried on but we are not where we wanted to be as yet.”

By Stephan Sookram