BRIDGETOWN–T&T's crick­eters Dar­ren Bra­vo, De­nesh Ramdin, Lendl Sim­mons, Ravi Ram­paul and Samuel Badree have all been named on the West In­dies Pool A for the up­com­ing Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) play­er draft set for June 5 in Ja­maica.This and oth­er de­tails in­clud­ing the names of the re­main­ing in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers and the West In­dies elite play­ers and the CPL tele­vi­sion ads were some of the in­for­ma­tion re­vealed in a press con­fer­ence held in Bar­ba­dos by CPL of­fi­cials that was streamed live around the world on the tour­na­ment web­site, and at­tend­ed by the West In­dies crick­et team, who are in a camp ahead of the Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy League.

Pre­sen­ta­tions were made by CPL op­er­a­tions man­ag­er, Carlisle Pow­ell, Kier­an Fo­ley, Dig­i­cel Group mar­ket­ing op­er­a­tions di­rec­tor, CPL com­mer­cial di­rec­tor Jamie Stew­art and CPL event di­rec­tor Rhon­da Kel­ly. Pow­ell ex­plained the draft process stat­ing that each team will have a se­lec­tion com­mit­tee con­sist­ing of the head coach, as­sis­tant coach, the West In­dies fran­chise play­er and the in­ter­na­tion­al fran­chise play­er, and that to­geth­er these four mem­bers of the team se­lec­tion com­mit­tee will plan and for­malise their strat­e­gy and picks for each round go­ing in­to the of­fi­cial draft.

There are three pools of play­ers–A, B and C–who will be a part of the draft. Pool A play­ers are those who have played in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et, and are con­sid­ered top play­ers based on their cur­rent form while Pool B play­ers are crick­eters who play most­ly re­gion­al crick­et al­though they may have al­so played at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el. Pool C con­sists of de­vel­op­ing, tal­ent­ed un­der-23 play­ers from across the re­gion. Al­so in­clud­ed on the West In­dies Pool A are An­dre Rus­sell, Dwayne Smith, Fi­del Ed­wards, John­son Charles, Ke­mar Roach, Kier­an Pow­ell, Ramnaresh Sar­wan, Shiv­nar­ine Chan­der­paul and Tino Best.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Pool A play­ers are con­firmed to be Aaron Finch (Aus), Al­bie Morkel (South Africa), Daniel Vet­tori (NZ), Dirk Nannes (Aus), Luke Pomers­bach (Aus), Shak­ib al Hasan (Ban), Shaun Marsh (Aus), Shoaib Ma­lik (Pak), Steven Smith (Aus), Tamim Iqbal (Ban), Umar Ak­mal (Pak) and Ver­non Phi­lan­der (South Africa). In­ter­na­tion­al Pool B play­ers will be El­ton Chigum­bu­ra of Zim­bab­we, Davy Ja­cobs (South Africa), Justin Kemp (South Africa), James Franklin (NZ), Mark Gup­til (NZ) and Kevin O'Brien (IRL) while the West In­dies Pools B and C are some 200 play­ers strong, and list­ed on the CPL T20 web­site (www.cplt20.com)."We have se­cured a broad se­lec­tion of crick­et tal­ent that we feel will ap­peal to crick­et fans every­where," said Stew­art. "The va­ri­ety of play­ers, from the ex­pe­ri­enced and well-es­tab­lished to the ris­ing star on the crick­et scene should make the in­au­gur­al CPL an ex­cit­ing tour­na­ment that show­cas­es the best of the best."

Kel­ly an­nounced that the mar­ket­ing and ad­ver­tis­ing cam­paign would be­gin in earnest across the re­gion, invit­ing every­one to come and play in Ju­ly and Au­gust. A num­ber of teas­er ads were shown to the au­di­ence which were met with ap­plause.Fo­ley said that as CPL's ma­jor spon­sor, the com­pa­ny is pulling out all the stops to cre­ate ma­jor buzz and ex­cite­ment around the CPL T20 tour­na­ment, and have made a sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment in a mar­ket­ing cam­paign that will in­clude ad­ver­tis­ing, pub­lic re­la­tions and pro­mo­tion­al ac­tiv­i­ties.