PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC) — Trinidad and Tobago Red Force see their West Indies A team trio of Jason Mohammed, Kyle Hope and Jon-Russ Jaggesar as key to a successful run in this year’s regional first class championship.

All three players showed excellent form on the recent one-day tour of Sri Lanka and Head Coach Gus Logie believes they will be pivotal to Red Force’s challenge when their campaign bowls off here next week against Windward Islands Volcanoes.

Mohammed and Hope both gathered hundreds against Sri Lanka, A while off-spinner Jaggesar shone with the ball.

“We have three players from the A-tour — Kyle Hope, Jason Mohammed and also Jon-Russ Jaggesar, and all three have distinguished themselves in the past,” Logie said.

“Young Hope had a brilliant season last year and, on the back of that, was elevated to the A-team tour. We expect him to come back now with a bit more experience and a bit more hungry and at the same time, we expect Jaggesar, coming off his first season, coming back again with a lot of experience to really and truly shoulder the bowling attack.”

He added: “And of course Jason, who has been around for some time — I still believe his best years are ahead of him. I think being relieved of the captaincy last year would have taken some of the burden off his shoulders and I think he will be looking forward to proving the critics wrong and having a big season.”

In addition, Logie pointed to the likes of captain Yannick Ottley and Yannic Cariah as players who would supplement the batting and leg-spinner Imran Khan who, together with Jaggesar, would form a formidable spin attack.

The former West Indies player and head coach said Red Force was a strong, all-round unit and he expected every player to perform their roles credibly.

“I think we are well served in all departments and it’s about performance, it’s about players stepping up to the plate now,” he stressed.

“They’ve put in all the hard work and they’ve gotten all the support necessary. It’s up to the players now to go out there and deliver.”

Red Force struggled last season, managing a mere three victories en route to finishing fourth on 81 points, behind the table-topping Guyana Jaguars who repeated as champions for a second-straight year.

Their previous season was also a disappointing one, finishing fifth with only two wins, and Logie said if Red Force were to improve significantly, the batting department needed to start the revival.

“I think it’s a combination of things. We talk about the batting — it’s going to be important for us to spend time at the wicket,” he contended.

“It’s four-day cricket and I think the last couple of years we have seen ourselves not bat basically for a day and a bit. We want to see if we can improve that and certainly we can, with the confidence of the players now grown.

“We’ve had three years in this set-up and at the end of the day we hope they would have learnt a lot and they would now come out with a lot more confidence. It’s about building their innings and about partnerships, and at the end of the day we’re talking about batting a day and a session at least, putting up scores of over 350-400 runs.

“I think if we can do that consistently, we would be well on our way to having an improved season.”