Vin­ode Mam­chan

The West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) has signed off a 20-year deal with Verus In­ter­na­tion­al to take charge of the Caribbean Pre­mier League with an op­tion to re­new for an­oth­er 30 years–lead­ing to a pos­si­ble 50-year as­so­ci­a­tion for the tour­na­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to a top board of­fi­cial: "The li­cence for the first part is for 20 years and then there is the op­tion to re­new this for an­oth­er 30 years which makes it a pos­si­ble 50-year as­so­ci­a­tion."

The WICB stands to gain US$1.5m per year from the own­ers of the tour­na­ment Verus In­ter­na­tion­al as li­cence fees. This mon­ey will be used to put more play­ers across the re­gion on re­tain­er con­tracts.

The WICB's last stand with the re­gion­al T20 tour­na­ment was in Jan­u­ary this year. T&T won that tour­na­ment and will be rep­re­sent­ing the West In­dies at the Cham­pi­ons League tour­na­ment in Sep­tem­ber this year.

A to­tal of 90 play­ers will be con­tract­ed to play in the CPL. Each of the six fran­chise teams will be com­prised of 15 play­ers. All teams are re­quired to have a min­i­mum num­ber of lo­cal play­ers from their par­tic­u­lar fran­chise coun­try. At least four of them must be un­der the age of 23, and teams can al­so field a max­i­mum of four in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers. The re­main­der of the team must con­sist of re­gion­al and/or lo­cal play­ers.

So far the or­gan­is­ers have con­tract­ed six re­gion­al T20 leg­ends in Dwayne Bra­vo, Kieron Pol­lard, Sunil Nar­ine, Chris Gayle, Mar­lon Samuels and Dar­ren Sam­my and they have been spread across the six teams.

In ad­di­tion to them, they have so far con­tract­ed in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers Ricky Ponting, Adam Gilchrist, Mo­hammed Hafeez, Ross Tay­lor and Her­shelle Gibbs. The main draft for tour­na­ment takes place on May 24.

Mean­while, the CPL has signed glob­al telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny and long-term West In­dies Crick­et spon­sor Dig­i­cel as a ma­jor spon­sor of the tour­na­ment.

Dig­i­cel has been the main spon­sor of West In­dies Crick­et since 2004. Since that time, the com­pa­ny has proven its worth as a mar­ket­ing leader in the re­gion–some­thing the CPL ap­pre­ci­ates will bring great val­ue to the tour­na­ment. The spon­sor­ship will be a mul­ti-year deal and rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment from Dig­i­cel.