Vin­ode Mam­chan

The West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) needs to bring back the WICB Re­gion­al T20 crick­et se­ries to the peo­ple of the Caribbean.

The Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) T20 team is fan­tas­tic and has brought the crowds out but this num­ber could dou­ble if they bring back the Re­gion­al T20 tour­na­ment.

This would not be du­pli­ca­tion be­cause one has to un­der­stand that the CPL is "fran­chise" crick­et. What I have no­ticed whilst trav­el­ling around cov­er­ing West In­dies crick­et and CPL crick­et, is that the peo­ple of the Caribbean is find­ing it very hard to come to terms with "fran­chise" crick­et.

The ri­val­ry be­tween ter­ri­to­ries in the Caribbean that has been built up over years re­mains and fans want more of that.

They want to see Sunil Nar­ine play­ing for T&T and not Guyana, they want Ke­iron Pol­lard to play as part of the Red Force. T&T fans have felt the most dis­ap­point­ment be­cause they lost the most play­ers to oth­er teams in the Caribbean.

When the CPL was con­cep­tu­alised in an ef­fort to make the tour­na­ment com­pet­i­tive, they had to dis­man­tle the pow­er­ful Red Force.

The team who had seen four out of the first five Cham­pi­ons League, was scat­tered around the Caribbean and two of their play­ers were ac­tu­al­ly made cap­tains of oth­er teams. Pol­lard went to the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents, while De­nesh Ramdin went to Guyana to be their cap­tain.

I am aware of the fact that un­der the present arrange­ment be­tween the WICB and CPL, the for­mer would have to seek per­mis­sion from the lat­ter to host T20 match­es in­volv­ing more than two teams in the Caribbean.

So I can't see CPL giv­ing per­mis­sion for the WICB to host a Re­gion­al T20 tour­na­ment. How­ev­er, it is worth a try be­cause it could bring se­ri­ous in­ter­est back to crick­et and I think the ad­ver­tis­ing dol­lar would come in.

Let's hope that this idea can be toyed with in the not too dis­tant fu­ture. I want to make it clear that I am not call­ing for the demise of the CPL, what I am say­ing is that there is a place for both tour­na­ments. The Re­gion­al T20 tour­na­ment can be played in Jan­u­ary over two weeks and the CPL can re­main in their win­dow which is June and Ju­ly.

Mean­while, shift­ing the top­ic a bit, I would like to ask the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) to take a look at the tim­ing of their do­mes­tic T20 tour­na­ment.

I am look­ing at what is hap­pen­ing in Bar­ba­dos and I to­tal­ly agree with their think­ing. They start­ed their do­mes­tic T20 crick­et last week­end and it is be­ing played just be­fore the CPL.

There lo­cal play­ers are get­ting a chance to play T20 crick­et be­fore go­ing to CPL and the fans are get­ting a taste of what is to come. What they are do­ing is build­ing up the hype for T20 crick­et at this point in time and this would auger well when match­es come to Bar­ba­dos.

In Trinidad, our T20 tour­na­ment is done and dust­ed and the league is cur­rent­ly be­ing played.

We are play­ing league crick­et go­ing in­to the CPL and this can­not be the best prepa­ra­tion. I know that the pres­i­dent of the TTCB, Az­im Bas­sarath has stat­ed the struc­ture and tim­ing of do­mes­tic crick­et is very flu­id and the board is look­ing for ways to bet­ter the league. This is good news and this is why I de­cid­ed to throw in my two cents.

Fi­nal­ly on the col­umn to­day, I would like to con­tin­ue my call for peo­ple with self­ish agen­das to keep away from the ad­min­is­tra­tion of crick­et.

I have seen enough to know that there are peo­ple mov­ing around lo­cal crick­et, try­ing to get on board and they are hurt­ing the game in the process. Please! Please! Please! keep away crick­et does not need you.