The 2019 Hero Caribbean CPL has been de­scribed as the most ex­cit­ing amongst all T20 leagues in­clud­ing the pres­ti­gious In­di­an Pre­mier League (IPL) at the halfway stage of the tour­na­ment.

Af­ter 15 match­es the strike rate gar­nered over­all is nine runs per over, beat­ing the pre­vi­ous best of 8.6 runs per over record­ed at the In­di­an Pre­mier League.

Runs have been flow­ing off the bats of the men in­volved in the 2019 CPL which has seen the high­est score record­ed in the league. That record for the high­est over­all score has been bro­ken on three oc­ca­sions this year. First­ly the Tallawahs cre­at­ed a record with the score at 241/4 which was sur­passed in the same match by the St. Kitts/Nevis Pa­tri­ots who record­ed 242/6.

A cou­ple of days lat­er, the pow­er­ful Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers ham­mered the Tallawahs to the tune of 267/2 cre­at­ing the new record.

Chris Wat­son, head of mar­ket­ing at CPL said that it is no sur­prise that the en­ter­tain­ment val­ue is so high at the CPL. "CPL is the biggest par­ty in sport no doubt. The en­ter­tain­ment val­ue here is just amaz­ing. The peo­ple bring so much that is unique to T20 crick­et and of course, the play­ers have been amaz­ing.

While we get big­ger crowds at the IPL, you don't get the char­ac­ters that you get in the Caribbean. The Caribbean is the per­fect fit for T20 be­cause it brings tremen­dous ac­tion on and off the field.

Mean­while, the St. Lu­cia Zouks did not add to the en­ter­tain­ment val­ue on Fri­day night, as all they made were 102 for nine (Obed Mc­Coy was un­able to bat), against a Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents team that scored 172/6.

While Tri­dents open­ers John­son Charles and Hero CPL debu­tant Justin Greaves blazed their way to 63/0 in the first six overs of the night, the Zouks lost wick­ets in each of the first three overs of their run-chase and an­oth­er in the sixth to reach 48/4 at the same stage.

The Zouks had done a rea­son­able job in re­strict­ing the Tri­dents to 172/6 af­ter the open­ers had tak­en the score to 76/0 af­ter just sev­en overs, in­clud­ing one spell of sev­en bound­aries in the space of 10 balls be­tween the sec­ond and fourth overs.

Daren Sam­my brought him­self on and im­me­di­ate­ly slammed the brakes on the scor­ing, just five sin­gles com­ing from his first over.

Obed Mc­Coy backed that up with three dot balls to build the pres­sure on Charles, who suc­cumbed for 28 as he skied the next ball to Kesrick Williams at long-on.

Greaves went through to an ex­cel­lent de­but 50 in 36 balls but was al­ready slow­ing down by that point and even­tu­al­ly sweep­ing Rah­keem Corn­wall to deep square-leg where Col­in de Grand­homme took a smart low catch.

Hav­ing scored 76/0 in the first sev­en overs of the in­nings, the Tri­dents man­aged just 29/2 from the next sev­en.

The Tri­dents might have been a touch dis­ap­point­ed with 172/6 giv­en the plat­form they had, but it soon looked plen­ty as the Zouks lost key men ear­ly.

Corn­wall hit two fours to start the in­nings as the Tri­dents en­trust­ed the open­ing over to their sec­ond debu­tant, 19-year-old left-arm spin­ner Joshua Bish­op. He held his nerve, though, and got his re­ward as Corn­wall tried and failed to clear Hold­er at mid-off.

Hold­er then struck with the ball, sur­pris­ing Col­in In­gram – who had been dropped the first ball - with ex­tra bounce and hav­ing him caught at point.

When Kavem Hodge was run out in the next over af­ter An­dre Fletch­er called him through for a sin­gle that was nev­er on, the Zouks were left with a moun­tain to climb.

<St Kitts shar­ing crick­et love>

The gov­ern­ment of St. Kitts and Nevis has in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in sports tourism and has used crick­et as a ma­jor tool to bring vis­i­tors through their bor­ders.

How­ev­er, lo­cal hote­lier Steve Tyson be­lieves oth­er­wise. Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports he said: "We have not seen a ma­jor in­crease in tourist ar­rivals with the crick­et com­ing here. I don't know the ex­act rea­son but the gov­ern­ment has been try­ing through sports tourism to boost the sec­tor."

Tyson who is the gen­er­al man­ag­er of the very pop­u­lar Ocean Ter­race Inn (OTI) says that Caribbean trav­ellers pre­fer his es­tab­lish­ment be­cause it is smack in the City Cen­tre of Bas­seterre. "Our ho­tel is right in the mid­dle of the City and this helps with our oc­cu­pan­cy. How­ev­er, crick­et has not helped us."

His as­sis­tant man­ag­er Twyla Amory said sports tourism was the way to go for her coun­try but the CPL is yet to pay div­i­dends. "We are hop­ing that we can get an in­crease in ar­rivals here be­cause of crick­et. I know that these things take time but we are hope­ful that the ef­fort be­ing made by the gov­ern­ment to in­crease the ar­rivals im­pact us.

"We are heav­i­ly pre­ferred by re­gion­al trav­ellers be­cause of our won­der­ful and very rea­son­able pack­ages, we want that to ben­e­fit the crick­et-lov­ing peo­ple as well. Busi­ness peo­ple al­ways come to us, what we want is the crick­et crowd when there is crick­et on the Is­land.

"We are go­ing to em­bark on a cam­paign of spe­cial deals to get in the crick­et crowd. We want to give them some­thing spe­cial just to say thank you for com­ing to our beau­ti­ful coun­try."