Vin­ode Mam­chan

The Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) 2014 se­ries will not be af­fect­ed by the new pro­pos­als put for­ward for the gov­er­nance of world crick­et.One of the ma­jor is­sues re­gard­ing the new pro­pos­als is the aban­don­ment of the Fu­ture Tours Pro­gramme (FTP) and re­vert­ing to bi-lat­er­al se­ries.The or­gan­is­ers of the CPL would have looked at the FTP and brought the tour­na­ment for­ward by two weeks. This has al­lowed a num­ber of top in­ter­na­tion­al stars to come to the CPL be­cause their re­spec­tive coun­tries would have been idle at the time of the Ju­ly 5 to Au­gust 10 pe­ri­od.

How­ev­er, di­rec­tor of the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) Bal­dath Ma­habir said this year's tour­na­ment will not be af­fect­ed be­cause the FTP will still be in ef­fect."The new pro­pos­als have to be rat­i­fied by the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) mem­bers. Com­ing out of the last meet­ing where it was re­port­ed that the 'new prin­ci­ples' put for­ward by the work­ing com­mit­tee, was unan­i­mous­ly sup­port­ed, the ICC mem­bers are ex­pect­ed to meet in June to rat­i­fy the de­ci­sion. Un­til then the FTP holds, so the tours which were pre­vi­ous­ly arranged would come off as planned."

The CPL takes place the month af­ter, so the time for coun­tries to or­gan­ise bi-lat­er­al tours would be too short. This means that the crick­et sea­son in the West In­dies will not be af­fect­ed this year.

New Zealand and Bangladesh are due here un­der the FTP, af­ter the Eng­land lim­it­ed overs and T20 tour of the Caribbean which will be­gin at the end of this month.When new pro­pos­als are rat­i­fied, the WICB will then work in se­cur­ing bi-lat­er­al se­ries against the dif­fer­ent coun­tries. The pres­i­dent of the WICB, Dave Cameron men­tioned at a press con­fer­ence on Mon­day in Trinidad, that a num­ber of top na­tions have al­ready giv­en the WICB their word that they will be will­ing to play the re­gion­al side.The WICB is look­ing to these type of arrange­ments with top na­tions to make mon­ey and cut their deficit