A new five-team T20 tournament called the Global Super League is set to launch in Guyana and will be played from November 26 to December 7. The league will feature teams from five different countries and is sanctioned by Cricket West Indies (CWI) and "fully supported" by the government of Guyana, a "key stakeholder" in the competition, which has a prize money of US$1 million.
This is slated to be South America's first standalone cricket event and will feature Guyana Amazon Warriors from the Caribbean Premier League (CPL) and four other "established" T20 teams from around the world. ESPNcricinfo has learnt Hampshire, the three-time champions of England's T20 Blast, are among the invited teams.
There will be a total of 11 matches in the Global Super League T20 with each team playing four matches in the group stage. The top two teams will then progress to the final. All the matches will be played at the Guyana National Stadium in Providence. A media release also said that the event is set to take place annually featuring different teams from around the world being invited to take part each season.
Two months after sprinter Julien Alfred delivered St Lucia's first Olympic medal, St Lucia's very own Daren Sammy and his Kings gave the region its maiden CPL title, silencing a packed crowd at the Providence.
The crowd had been at its loudest when Guyana Amazon Warriors reduced Kings to 51 for 4 in their chase of 139 on a slow, two-paced surface. Kings went nine overs without a single boundary. Roston Chase was battling illness. Aaron Jones was struggling so much that Sammy contemplated retiring him out. Amazon Warriors' four-pronged spin attack had their side dreaming of back-to-back titles.
Jones, however, turned the tables on them and crushed their dream. After being on 10 off 19 balls, Jones zoomed to 38 off his next 12 balls, forging an unbroken 88-run partnership with Chase, who has been with Kings for five seasons.
Chase played the Marlon Samuels role, something he's been doing for West Indies for a while, and capped a stellar week for him, in which he had also earned a CWI central contract.
South Africa reeled off an effortless opening win against West Indies, as the left-arm spin of Nonkululeko Mlaba devastated West Indies' top order, before Laura Wolvaardt and Tazmin Brits produced fuss-free unbeaten fifties. The openers walked South Africa home with 13 balls to spare, in the Dubai curtain-raiser for this women's T20 World Cup.
West Indies couldn't really get out of the blocks, with bat or ball. Stafanie Taylor was their top scorer, with 44 not out off 41. But they never seemed like putting up a huge total, and South Africa never seemed at risk of failing to chase it down.
Mlaba struck once in the powerplay, firing a flatter delivery into Qiana Joseph's off stump to end a pained innings (4 off 14 balls). But she did the majority of her damage through the middle, by which stage West Indies were already battling to put up a decent score.
Bringing the fun back has been a big part of West Indies' women's T20 World Cup preparations. It's a simple ethos, but a much-needed one championed by head coach Shane Deitz, the Australian who is a year into his job.
"There is a lot of laughter," Deitz told ESPNcricinfo. "[It's about] generally having fun, and being relaxed, and enjoying each other's company, enjoying the experience of playing cricket, [and] travelling the world.
"That's one thing that, coming from other jobs where it's a bit more serious and they want a lot of structure, it's good that we have a bit less of those things and make it a bit more [about] backing your gut feeling and your intuition, and how you want to play and how you naturally grow up playing.
"You grow up playing on beaches, in the streets - a bit more [of] that environment. Australia's a lot more structured. So just finding that balance and how to work it into our cricket has probably been one of the things that we're trying to learn and use that to our advantage, [and] make the girls feel comfortable that that's how we're going to play."
ST. JOHN’S, Antigua - Cricket West Indies (CWI) for the first time has awarded multi-year contracts for several of its top Men’s and Women’s players for the next two years.
This historic achievement comes on the back of a new four-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed in January 2024 between CWI and the West Indies Players Association (WIPA).
Fifteen (15) Senior Men’s players have been contracted, with six (6) of those players being offered multi-year contracts based on their performances during the 2023-2024 Evaluation Period. Of the fifteen (15) Senior Women’s players contracted, three (3) were awarded multi-year contracts.
