New Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers head coach Phil Sim­mons chose to uti­lize four of the five in­ter­na­tion­al play­er slots avail­able to each team for the 2023 Re­pub­lic Bank Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL), leav­ing one slot for a lat­er time.

At the top of Sim­mons’ wish list were 33-year-old South African bats­man Rilee Rossouw, who will play in the CPL for the first time and 36-year-old for­mer Guyana Ama­zon War­riors and Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents bats­man, Mar­tin Gup­till of New Zealand.

The oth­er in­ter­na­tion­als se­lect­ed by Sim­mons are 18-year-old Afghanistan spin­ner, Noor Ah­mad and 20-year-old Sri Lankan fast bowler Math­ee­sha Pathi­rana who has drawn com­par­isons to coun­try­man La­sith Ma­lin­ga, for his bowl­ing ac­tion.

To­day’s CPL Draft Show, which was broad­cast around the re­gion and the world, re­vealed the se­lec­tions of the six fran­chis­es for the 11th edi­tion of the CPL.

TKR al­so used its four avail­able draft picks to bring in ex­pe­ri­enced 37-year-old Ja­maican wick­et-keep­er bats­man Chad­wick Wal­ton, a two-time CPL win­ner (2013 & 2016) with the Ja­maica Tallawahs.

The three oth­er TKR draftees were T&T bowl­ing all­rounder Ter­rance Hinds and West In­dies emerg­ing play­ers, Khadeem Al­leyne of Bar­ba­dos and Jaden Carmichael who hails from St Kitts and Nevis.

They all join re­tained TKR’s play­ers Kieron Pol­lard, An­dre Rus­sell, Sunil Nar­ine, Nicholas Pooran, Akeal Ho­sein and Jay­den Seales. For­mer TKR cap­tain Dwayne Bra­vo and Mark Deyal were both trad­ed in­to the TKR set up ahead of the draft from the St Kitts and Nevis Pa­tri­ots and St Lu­cia Kings re­spec­tive­ly.

TKR Ros­ter:

Kieron Pol­lard (c), An­dre Rus­sell, Sunil Nar­ine, Nicholas Pooran, Rilee Rossouw, Akeal Ho­sein, Dwayne Bra­vo, Mar­tin Gup­til, Noor Ah­mad, Math­ee­sha Pathi­rana, Jay­den Seales, Mark Deyal, Chad­wick Wal­ton, Ter­rance Hinds, Khadeem Al­leyne and Jaden Carmichael.