Manager of Guyana's Carib Beer cricket team Carl Moore said yesterday his team's seven-wicket win over Barbados was a welcome one.
"This is a welcome victory for us which will put us in good stead of making the semi-finals," Moore said after the match yesterday.
With the win Guyana are now on 14 points and will need to win their remaining two matches against West Indies `B' which starts on Thursday at Enmore and Kenya the following week-end at Bourda to remain in with a chance on contesting the semi-finals.
Moore said with the widely anticipated return of test players Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan to boost the team's batting department, he expected the team to do very well in the remaining two games of the 2004 Carib Beer series.
"With God on our side we will continue to do well," Moore declared.
And Trinidad manager Omar Khan blamed his team's batting as the cause for the seven-wicket defeat.
"We batted very badly. That was our main downfall," Khan told Stabroek Sports after the game.
"Both times that we batted we did not perform as expected," Khan added.
Khan said after winning the toss and deciding to bat first it was incumbent on the side to put up a good total and the resulting 143 was not sufficient.
Khan said even though his side faced a first innings deficit of 127 runs had his team put up a much better showing leaving Guyana about 150 runs to win the outcome might have been different.
He said the goal now is to try to get the batsmen to be more focused and to put good scores down. On the plus side Khan praised the batting of Dwayne Bravo who scored a fighting 68 in his team's second innings and also the bowling of Rayad Emrit.
Meanwhile, Trinidad have named an unchanged team to play against Jamaica in the next round but Imran Jan has been replaced as captain by Daren Ganga.