ST. JOHN'S, An­tigua–An­oth­er sea­son packed with bright prospects and great op­por­tu­ni­ties for the re­gion's best play­ers be­gins when the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) Pro­fes­sion­al Crick­et League Re­gion­al Four-Day Tour­na­ment opens to­day.

Lee­ward Is­lands Hur­ri­canes host T&T Red Force at Warn­er Park, Bas­seterre, St Kitts. The Hur­ri­canes–un­der new man­age­ment–will be hop­ing to con­tin­ue to build on their grow­ing con­fi­dence from the tail-end of last sea­son, which they end­ed with two straight vic­to­ries in­clud­ing a stun­ning, come-from-be­hind win at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre, Bal­main, Cou­va, against T&T.

T&T's bat­ting was dis­ap­point­ing last sea­son, which saw the Red Force on­ly fin­ish ahead of the Lee­ward Is­lands on the six-team stand­ings. The Red Force bat­ting in­cludes draft picks Nars­ingh De­onar­ine and Kyle Hope, old­er broth­er of West In­dies open­er Shai Hope, while a lot will de­pend on the left-hand­ed duo of Evin Lewis and Yan­nic Cari­ah. The Guyana Jaguars are ex­pect­ed to face a typ­i­cal­ly stout chal­lenge, when they face Wind­ward Is­lands Vol­ca­noes at the Guyana Na­tion­al Sta­di­um. It will be a hard act for the Jaguars to fol­low up from last sea­son, af­ter they be­came the first side to claim the Headley-Weekes Tro­phy in the fran­chise era of four-day crick­et, fol­low­ing vic­to­ries in eight of their match­es in­clud­ing a 92-run win in the cor­re­spond­ing fix­ture last sea­son.

The match-of-the-round is, how­ev­er, shap­ing up to be at Kens­ing­ton Oval in Bridgetown.

It fea­tures Bar­ba­dos Pride, last year's sec­ond-placed team, with a hand­ful of Test stars in­clud­ing cap­tain Kraigg Brath­waite, bats­men Shane Dowrich and Shai Hope, fast bowler Ke­mar Roach and left-arm spin­ner Jomel War­ri­can, and their long-stand­ing ri­vals Ja­maica Scor­pi­ons boost­ed by Bar­ba­di­an draft pick Kirk Ed­wards. It's the sec­ond sea­son of the re­gion­al four-day tour­na­ment un­der the fran­chise for­mat, fea­tur­ing ten rounds of match­es � the same as last sea­son � played over the next five months be­tween fran­chis­es drawn from the six ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards of the WICB. "We're ex­cit­ed go­ing in­to the sec­ond sea­son of the PCL Re­gion­al Four-Day," said WICB di­rec­tor of crick­et Richard Py­bus. "We want to see how much progress the fran­chise teams have made hav­ing had an off-sea­son with their squads to work on their prepa­ra­tion and fit­ness, as well as team and in­di­vid­ual game plans.

"Last sea­son, the teams didn't have the off-sea­son to get their squads set­tled, and for the coach­es and sup­port staff to chal­lenge the play­ers to grow their games, so this year will be an op­por­tu­ni­ty to eval­u­ate the qual­i­ty of the off-sea­son work put in by the play­ers and coach­es."