KINGSTON–Ja­maica wants to be fran­chise own­er for one of the clubs tak­ing part in the Caribbean Pre­mier league (CPL), the new Twen­ty/20 crick­et com­pe­ti­tion set to re­place the tour­na­ment cur­rent­ly un­der­way.

Ja­maica Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Lyn­del Wright says he plans to make a strong case dur­ing a meet­ing with of­fi­cials of the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) in St Lu­cia this week­end.

The cur­rent re­gion­al T20 which is be­ing con­test­ed by ter­ri­to­ries will be aban­doned af­ter this sea­son. "Dis­cus­sions have been tak­ing place be­tween our­self and the min­is­ter of sports," de­clared Wright in a TVJ in­ter­view. "We hope that this will bear good fruit and cer­tain­ly...we need to have a fran­chise hold­er here".

CPL, the new fran­chise-based Twen­ty20 tour­na­ment, was launched last month in the pres­ence of the re­gion's lead­ing crick­et of­fi­cials. Or­gan­is­ers say tour­na­ment dates, lo­ca­tions and part­ners are ex­pect­ed to be an­nounced short­ly. "We will have fur­ther dis­cus­sion on (our wish) when we go to our meet­ing this week­end in St Lu­cia," said Wright.

"I think that from all in­di­ca­tions we are very keen that Ja­maica will be giv­en a fran­chise."

The CPL will com­prise each fran­chise team be­ing built around Caribbean play­ers com­ple­ment­ed by a few in­ter­na­tion­al high-cal­i­bre star play­ers from abroad.