ST. JOHN’S, Antigua – Half dozen players with Test match experience have been included in the list of 90 entered in the Player Draft of the West Indies Cricket Board Professional Cricket League.
The Player Draft, which has been organised with the goal of achieving an equitable distribution of the available player talent in the Regional 4-Day and NAGICO Super50 tournaments, takes place tomorrow, Thursday, June 18, at the Accra Beach Hotel in Barbados, starting at 1 p.m.
Leeward Islands Hurricanes will make the opening selection.
They will be followed by Trinidad & Tobago Red Force, then the Jamaica Franchise, Windward Islands Volcanoes, Barbados Pride and reigning Regional 4-Day champions Guyana Jaguars.
This sequence will be repeated for each of the five rounds of draft picks. Each franchise must pick a player in each round and will have two minutes to select the player. Where a selection is not made within the stipulated time, the offending franchise will miss their turn and must wait until all other franchises have made their selection in that round before making its selection.
A total of 30 players will be drafted. The remaining players will be available for Pay-For-Play contracts at the discretion of the various franchises.
Fans can view the “live” webcast of the Draft on the WICB’s website, www.windiescricket.com.
Not one ticket has yet been sold to a Test match in Australia this summer. In fact, no dates have been announced — except the two that need no announcement, Boxing Day in Melbourne and the New Year match in Sydney — and no one has really noticed.
All that is known is that New Zealand will be here for three Tests in November, the shoulder season, and the West Indies for three in December and January, prime time. A month ago, that felt like the wrong way around. Now, it feels like a snub to the Kiwis and the incorporation of a month-long bye at the height of the cricket season.
Whether Australia was exceptionally good or the Windies lamentably poor in their two just completed Tests doesn't matter. It is impossible to think that their contests will be any closer here. It would be nice to believe that the West Indies could guarantee the presence of, for instance, the ever reluctant Chris Gayle and Dwayne Bravo, but they cannot. The Windies can't even necessarily guarantee to stay for the duration. Eight months ago, they walked out of a tour of India.
THE Guyana Amazon Warriors, Barbados Tridents, St Lucia Zouks and St Kitts & Nevis Patriots yesterday confirmed changes to their squads for this year’s Hero CPL. Lasith Malinga, who has been ruled out of the competition after picking up an injury, will be replaced by Marchant de Lange for the Amazon Warriors, while Jeevan Mendis will replace Justin Ontong, who requires a knee operation, in the Tridents squad. Shane Dowrich will replace the injured Nicholas Pooran in the Patriots squad, while international duty means that Shakib Al Hasan will be replaced by first Eddie Leie, and then Nathan McCullum. Pakistan international batsman, Umar Akmal, and South African all-rounder, David Wiese, will join the Amazon Warriors as mid-tournament replacements for Tillakaratne Dilshan and Thisara Perera, who have both been called up for international duty.
ST. JOHN’S, Antigua – With new rules in place, there is extra-special interest to see how this will impact upon the selectors of the six franchises in the second Player Draft of the West Indies Cricket Board’s Professional Cricket League.
The Draft, which has been organised with the goal of achieving an equitable distribution of the available player talent in the Regional 4-Day and NAGICO Super50 tournaments, will be staged this Thursday, June 18, at the Accra Beach Hotel in Barbados, starting at 1 p.m. Fans can view the “live” webcast of the Draft on the WICB’s website, www.windiescricket.com.
The Draft will be conducted over five rounds and two adjustments have been made to the Draft process which is expected to tax the selectors as their make their choices.
WITH less than a week to go before the start of the Hero Caribbean Premier League (CPL), the global broadcasters for the 2015 tournament have been announced, ensuring that the Biggest Party in Sport will be beamed into over 200 million households across the world. ESPN and Guardian Media Group are the broadcasters that will be providing coverage to the Caribbean for the duration of the tournament. Big-name broadcasters such as Sony Six (India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Maldives) BT Sport (UK), Guardian Group (Caribbean), ESPN (USA and Caribbean), Fox Sports (Australia), SuperSport (South Africa) and Sky (New Zealand) have all signed deals to carry live coverage of this year’s tournament, with a broadcaster in Pakistan and Bangladesh expected to be confirmed before the tournament starts.
