Vin­ode Mam­chan

The West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) stands to ben­e­fit to the tune of US$4.5M per year from their deal with Verus In­ter­na­tion­al the own­ers of the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL).

This ac­cord­ing to WICB di­rec­tor Bal­dath Ma­habir. The T&T rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the WICB said: "The West In­dies Crick­et Board was run­ning the re­gion­al T20 tour­na­ment and was los­ing US$3M a year be­cause there were no spon­sors. Now with this deal with the CPL we have our play­ers play­ing good qual­i­ty T20 crick­et and the WICB don't have to fork out the US$3M to stage it.

"On the oth­er hand CPL will pay the WICB a li­cense fee of US$1.5M per year, so in ef­fect the val­ue of the deal will worth US$4.5M to the WICB. Re­cent­ly ques­tions were raised as to why the WICB would en­ter in­to such a lengthy deal in terms of time (20 years) and whether they took in­to ac­count in­fla­tion when they set­tled for a fee of US$1.5M per year.

Ma­habir al­layed those fears by say­ing that the board has tak­en that in­to ac­count and there are mea­sures in place to deal with in­fla­tion. "There is a clause in the con­tract which states that af­ter sev­en years they can re­view the val­ue of the li­cense fee, so this is good and it will take in­to ac­count in­fla­tion and oth­er things."

Ma­habir said it would have been very dif­fi­cult for the WICB to go the route of the Board of Con­trol for Crick­et in In­dia (BC­CI) in own­ing the tour­na­ment and hav­ing fran­chis­es. "The WICB need­ed some­one to bankroll this tour­na­ment be­cause when you look at the econ­o­my in the re­gion, it would have been dif­fer­ent for the WICB to sell the fran­chis­es. You might have got­ten buy in from say Trinidad and To­ba­go but some of the oth­er coun­tries would have found it dif­fi­cult to be part of it.

"In this way the WICB can still ben­e­fit fi­nan­cial­ly and put more play­ers on re­tain­er con­tract, while the tour­na­ment is well tak­en care off."

The CPL which has re­placed the re­gion­al T20 tour­na­ment will of­fi­cial­ly bowl off on Ju­ly 30 and will have six teams com­ing from T&T, Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, An­tigua, Guyana and St Lu­cia.

The fix­tures which was re­vealed over the week­end will see the each fran­chise play­ing sev­en match­es, three at home, three away and one at a neu­tral venue. The se­mi-fi­nals and fi­nals will be played in Trinidad and To­ba­go.