ST. JOHN’S, Antigua – President of Cricket West Indies (CWI) Ricky Skerritt and Chief Executive Officer Jonny Grave will travel to Guyana today to meet with stakeholders and Government officials over the next two days.
Repairing stakeholder relationships was one of the key points of the “Cricket First Plan” put forward by Skerritt and vice president Dr. Kishore Shallow in their bid last March to be elected to their posts – and this visit to Georgetown is part of a series of trips that the CWI president has undertaken in keeping with this plan.
England batsman Alex Hales and Sri Lanka seamers Lasith Malinga and Isuru Udana were among the big gainers in the 2019 Caribbean Premier League draft, bagging USD 160,000 each after being picked up in the first round. Hales went to Barbados Tridents, Malinga to St Lucia Stars, and Udana to St Kitts & Nevis Patriots.
Andre Russell and Dwayne Bravo were retained by Jamaica Tallawahs and Trinbago Knight Riders respectively in the first round. Pakistan legspinner Shadab Khan, who missed CPL 2018, rounded off the first-round picks and will be in action for Guyana Amazon Warriors in the upcoming season.
Shadab is a like-for-like swap for Rashid Khan, who will instead feature as a marquee player in the Euro T20 Slam, which clashes with the CPL. Other CPL regulars such as Brendon McCullum, Luke Ronchi and Chris Lynn have also opted for the Euro T20 Slam over the CPL.
Usman Khawaja was taken to hospital after being rocked by a bouncer in an eventful start to Australia’s run chase in its win over the West Indies in a World Cup warm-up game in Southampton.
Khawaja opened alongside Aaron Finch in pursuit of the Windies’ total of 229 and while the captain started smoothly his partner was in a bad way as he walked off the field with the team doctor after copping a sickening blow.
On five in the second over, the left-hander — usually a brilliant player of the pull shot — was struck in the head by Andre Russell’s short ball and received medical attention in the middle before leaving the ground feeling his jaw. He was later taken away for a scan on his jaw.
With the deadline for teams to confirm their final 15-man squads being tomorrow, May 23rd, Caribbean fans are no doubt looking forward to several changes to the current West Indies squad. Particularly in the wake of West Indies’ display in the just-concluded Ireland Tri-Series and no less, following the feeble batting display against Australia earlier this morning. The fans were given an idea of the players who will be drafted into the team, if any, when the West Indies released a reserves list of ten players for the Cricket World Cup. These ten players being Sunil Ambris, Dwayne Bravo, John Campbell, Jonathan Carter, Roston Chase, Shane Dowrich, Keemo Paul, Khary Pierre, Raymon Reifer, and Kieron Pollard.
With the squad already seemingly a specialist batsman short, the frustrating form of Darren Bravo is growing exponentially worrying. Bravo--whose scores, in the relevant format since returning to international cricket last September have been 19, 27, 10, 40, 25, 61, 7, 9, 1, 17, 6 and 3--has gotten into double figures once since the squad was announced. More bemusing? The fact that the West Indies has the choice to make changes to the squad--at a time when the likes of John Campbell and Sunil Ambris have been knocking on the door with their recent performances--and the left-hander has failed to muster any courage to put up a fight for his place, by way of putting together a single decent innings since being named among those headed to England/Wales.
First the former self-styled “king of the good times” lost control of Royal Challengers Bangalore, the Indian Premier League cricket club, which passed to Diageo after it took control of United Spirits in 2012 and which ousted him from India’s biggest spirits group in 2016.
Then last year he ceased to be prime sponsor and co-owner of the Force India Formula 1 grand prix team when it collapsed into administration. Now he has had ownership of the Barbados Tridents Caribbean Premier League cricket franchise forcibly removed from him because of unpaid debts.
