ST. JOHN’S, Antigua – White flannels, red balls and familiar names will feature when the WICB Professional Cricket League Regional 4-Day Tournament resumes this weekend.
Players like Devendra Bishoo, Rajindra Chandrika, Jermaine Blackwood, as well as Kraigg Brathwaite, Carlos Brathwaite, Miguel Cummins, Shane Dowrich, Shai Hope and Kemar Roach will all line for their respective franchises with five rounds of matches remaining in the Tournament.
With half of the season completed prior to the break for Christmas and New Year’s holidays, plus the NAGICO Super50 Tournament, the six regional franchise teams will now commence the return legs of the season and some will be eyeing revenge on their opponents from the first leg of matches.
The second half of the season begins tomorrow, when strugglers Leeward Islands Hurricanes host title-hopefuls Jamaica Scorpions at the Vivian Richards Cricket Ground.
Cricket followers in the USA will have the chance to watch some of the greatest players in the world this summer in the HERO Caribbean Premier League (CPL) after the International Cricket Council (ICC) approved the staging of Twenty20 (T20) fixtures in the forthcoming 2016 season.
Six fixtures are planned to take place in July, with full fixture and ticket information for the coming season to be announced in due course. Commenting on the announcement, CPL CEO Damien O’Donohoe said: “Today is a landmark day for the CPL and a massive boost for cricket followers across the USA ahead of the CPL Player Draft in Barbados on Thursday.
“This project has been in discussion for many months and we are grateful to the ICC for supporting this move which enables us to step up our planning and open up opportunities for the cricket-hungry American public.
“I would also like to acknowledge the ongoing support of Dave Cameron and our partners in the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) in this process. The participation of the ICC Americas team in the recent Nagico Super 50 has proven to be a hugely important step forward and we are committed to providing more opportunities for players and that experience will certainly count for those six ICC Americas players who will be selected in this year’s Draft.
“The CPL has already had a positive impact in the Caribbean and we are excited about bringing top quality cricket to the USA. We are committed to developing the next generation of cricketers and we believe that by exposing the best talent from across the Caribbean and the Americas region in the CPL, we can inspire a new generation of cricketers in the USA.”
ICC Head of Global Development, Tim Anderson, said: “In partnership with the US cricket community the ICC has recently established a strategic framework for the future development of cricket in the USA. “The staging of high level international cricket is a key part of this strategy, therefore we see the approval of several CPL matches in the USA as a positive step forward for all cricket followers in the US. “We are also delighted that a number of development activities will take place around the matches, ensuring that the expertise and experience of the CPL players, coaches and officials contributes to the exciting growth of the game in the USA.”
WEST Indies cricket is facing the prospect of a player strike on the eve of the World Twenty20 after the 15-man squad appeared collectively to reject the contracts on offer from the WICB. Darren Sammy, captain of the West Indies T20 side, has written to the board stating the players “can’t accept” what they perceive as “huge financial reductions” in the terms compared to previous global tournaments which, he says, amounts to an 80% cut. Sammy also stated that 14 of the 15-man squad are not part of WIPA (the West Indies Players’ Association) and therefore had not given the organisation the authority to negotiate on their behalf. Though Sammy himself stopped short of threatening to withdraw from the tournament, ESPNcricinfo understands that other squad members have not ruled out the possibility. He made it clear that the players would not accept the current offer and called upon the board to “address this urgently”. “We want to represent the West Indies but the financials on offer we can’t accept,” Sammy wrote.
Even the name has a slight ungainliness about its three syllables. It does not have the flowing seductiveness of "Lara". You can try and smooth it by softening the ch- to the sh of champagne, of shimmy, of chassé. But within my head it is Tony Cozier's distinctive tch- that marks its ground, that hunches slightly, that frowns and knuckles down: this name means to stay. The ch- of chisel. Of charge. Of champion. Wait: champion? Too brash a word for Shiv, surely, but he was just that: indeed, he was the highest scorer for West Indies in their triumphant 2004 Champions Trophy final, and averaged 63.50 across their four matches in that competition. To state the obvious, with Chanderpaul it was always the stance rather than the shots that stuck in the memory. Yet his stance, the development of which Christian Ryan has done a superb job of chronicling, would have remained a mere quirk, destined to be only occasionally recalled and derided, had it not been allied to such consistent, near-phenomenal success.
Bridgetown, Barbados, February 8 - (www.bcacricket.org) - For contrasting reasons, Jason Holder, the West Indies Test and One-Day International captain and fast bowling all-rounder and his Test team-mate, left-arm spinner Jomel Warrican, are out of the Barbados Pride 13-man squad named today for the crucial sixth round WICB PCL first-class match against Windward Islands Volcanoes at Kensington Oval, starting Friday, February 12.
The 24-year-old Holder, who complained of fatigue by some of his cohorts towards the end of the recent NAGICO Super50 Championship in Trinidad & Tobago following their return from a three-Test series in Australia, which West Indies lost 2-0, requested a break for "personal reasons", while Warrican is resting a worrying finger injury on his bowling arm, chairman of selectors Henderson Wallace revealed.
"Jason has asked for some extra time for personal reasons and Jomel is being given some more time to recover from soreness on the index finger of his bowling hand," Wallace told BCAcricket.org.
