Advertise With Us
About Us
Listen
Watch

Login

/

Subscribe

Home

News

Carnival

Business

Sports

E-Paper

Features

Opinion

Traffic Cameras

Life

Classifieds

Death Notices

Community

Real Estate

About Us

Contact Us

Home
News
Carnival
Sports
E-paper
Business
Classifieds
Other
Death Notices
Traffic Cameras
Covid-19
Features
Opinion
Games
Subscriptions
Real Estate

Muddled season of CPL T20 cricket

by

#meta[ag-author]
20130828

An­dre E Bap­tiste

There can be lit­tle doubt that the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) failed Trinidad and To­ba­go, de­spite the pub­lic re­la­tions ex­er­cise.The end re­sult was that T&T's Red Steel strug­gled, al­though scrap­ing in­to the semi­fi­nals. That the T&T pub­lic booed, not once but twice, T&T cap­tain Dwayne Bra­vo on Sat­ur­day, when he ap­peared on the big screen, was in­ap­pro­pri­ate and wrong, but it was a mes­sage of dis­sat­is­fac­tion, giv­en the high stan­dards of the past.What this proves is that there must be a change of name go­ing for­ward and the name of the coun­tries must not be used. Some of the play­ers, with whom I have spo­ken, sug­gest nam­ing the teams af­ter the cap­i­tal towns in each is­land, which on the sur­face seems log­i­cal, but giv­en the way West In­dies crick­et is ad­min­is­tered, may not ac­tu­al­ly work.

T20 has long been good the­atre and al­ways had an ap­peal even go­ing back to the Stan­ford days. How­ev­er, it lost its val­ue when T&T be­gan to dom­i­nate and the oth­er teams fell short. There­fore, peo­ple around the Caribbean lost in­ter­est, not want­i­ng to watch one-sided match­es.It is clear in the cur­rent set up that T&T was at a se­ri­ous dis­ad­van­tage.Let us ex­am­ine the base; the West In­dies won the World T20 Cham­pi­onships in Sri Lan­ka in 2012. The West In­dies squad was DJG Sam­my, DJ Bra­vo, S Badree, DM Bra­vo, J Charles, FH Ed­wards, CH Gayle, SP Nar­ine, KA Pol­lard, D Ramdin, R Ram­paul, AD Rus­sell, MN Samuels, LMP Sim­mons, DR Smith.Of the play­ers above, the fol­low­ing are from T&T: DJ Bra­vo, Badree, D M Bra­vo, Nar­ine, Pol­lard, Ramdin, Ram­paul and Sim­mons–EIGHT.Three from Ja­maica: Gayle, Rus­sell and Samuels.Two from Bar­ba­dos: Ed­wards and Smith.Two from St Lu­cia: Sam­my and Charles.

The teams were di­vid­ed based on these play­ers with T&T re­ceiv­ing three of the eight play­ers above and the oth­er five placed else­where. Strange­ly, Guyana got three play­ers, Bar­ba­dos, one play­er and Ja­maica al­lo­cat­ed one play­er as well.Ja­maica had three play­ers and got two se­lect­ed. Math­e­mat­i­cal­ly, that is 66 per cent, Bar­ba­dos had two play­ers and got one se­lect­ed and that is 50 per cent, sim­i­lar­ly St Lu­cia had two play­ers and on­ly one was se­lect­ed, so that al­so is 50 per cent.Now let us re-ex­am­ine the Red Steel. Of the eight play­ers, T&T got three play­ers which is 37.5 per cent, and if we are to use the start­ing 11, where T&T had six play­ers in the fi­nals, they got on­ly two of the six–33 per cent.Even if you do not like math­e­mat­ics, there is in­equal­i­ty in all of this. While, it is easy to say that this tour­na­ment was a suc­cess in terms of crowd par­tic­i­pa­tion and be­cause peo­ple en­joyed the fun and par­ty at­mos­phere, those who ar­gue that it would de­vel­op young play­ers may need to re-think that idea, as both Guyana and Ja­maica strug­gled to give ex­po­sure to many "young and in­ex­pe­ri­enced" play­ers.

Clear­ly there is some­thing wrong with this mod­el and it may lead to ask­ing why don't we do some­thing sim­i­lar in ath­let­ics? How would Ja­maica feel about this if we de­cid­ed to have a spe­cial ath­let­ics games in the Caribbean and dis­pose of the lead­ing Ja­maican ath­letes to run for var­i­ous teams in the re­gion such as Shelly-Ann Fras­er-Pryce, Yohan Blake, Nes­ta Carter, War­ren Weir, etc. Of course Us­ain Bolt will run for Ja­maica. And how would Ja­maica feel to read on­line or lis­ten in the BBC news and be told that the Guyana or Bar­ba­dos track team de­feat­ed Ja­maica? I am cer­tain they would not be very hap­py.Most of the in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia stat­ed that T&T lost and that is how it was per­ceived.As it stands, the Ja­maican Tallawahs will not be able to rep­re­sent the re­gion in the Cham­pi­ons League crick­et in Sep­tem­ber, as T&T al­ready qual­i­fied. Does this mean, that they will rep­re­sent the West In­dies next year in 2014 and how many of the team will be el­i­gi­ble, giv­en the amount of play­ers on this team with out­side com­mit­ments to oth­er clubs?This CPL is very mud­dled in terms of process but it seems the on­ly in­ter­est is fi­nan­cial and if so, that is sad.


Click HERE to Login

Want FREE access to all our content? Sign up HERE!

Tagged in:

Responses

Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored

Trending

Acting CoP suspends officer in traffic warden viral video
Nine Vindra Naipaul-Coolman murder accused to receive $20M from State
Cop captured in social media row with Traffic Warden suspended
State must pay $20m for failed Naipaul-Coolman case
Harewood-Christopher in pole position for CoP job
President sends Erla Christopher's name to Parliament for CoP nominee debate
Griffith silent on Kamla’s call for unity: PDP, Duke, some ex-UNC MPs not interested
Highest-ranking name for new Police Commissioner delivered to President
Piarco records the lowest temperature in January in 10 years
US resident held with ammo in Piarco airport
Today's
Guardian
View
Subscribe

Publications

Hungry Ghosts

Hungry Ghosts

Hungry Ghosts

Hungry Ghosts

Pain, power and poison...a review of Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein

20230126132207
2022 TS Eliot Prize winner Anthony Joseph as he reads from his winning collection of poems Sonnets for Albert at the award ceremony in London on January 16.

2022 TS Eliot Prize winner Anthony Joseph as he reads from his winning collection of poems Sonnets for Albert at the award ceremony in London on January 16.

Adrian Pope

2022 TS Eliot Prize winner Anthony Joseph as he reads from his winning collection of poems Sonnets for Albert at the award ceremony in London on January 16.

2022 TS Eliot Prize winner Anthony Joseph as he reads from his winning collection of poems Sonnets for Albert at the award ceremony in London on January 16.

Adrian Pope

2022 TS Eliot poetry prize winner memorialises 'charismatic' father

20230126141654

Numbness in your feet?

20230123072450

Your walking gear matters!

20230116101944
Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

News

Business

Sports

Life

Opinion

Tobago Today

Classifieds

Death Notices

Subscriptions

Real Estate

Categories

News
Business
Sports
Features
Opinion
Traffic Cameras
Death Notices

INFORMATION

About Us
Contact Us
Advertise With Us
Privacy Policy
Subscriptions
Terms of Services

Digital Media

The Big Board Company.
Real Estate
Classifieds

TELEVISION

CNC3 Television

RADIO

951 Remix
Sangeet 106.1 FM
Sky 99.5FM
Slam 100.5 FM
Vibe CT 105 FM
Mix 90.1 FM (Guyana)
Freedom 106.5 FM

About Us

Guardian Media is the premier provider of multimedia solutions and authoritative insight on news, politics, business, finance, sports, and current affairs. Our brand portfolio includes CNC3, Guardian, TBC Radio Network and The Big Board Company.

Contact us

Send us an e-mail here or call us at +1-(868)-225-4465

Follow us