Of­ten dubbed the ‘biggest par­ty in sport’, the 2024 edi­tion of the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) bowls off to­day with new­com­ers An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Fal­cons (ABF) com­ing up against St Kitts & Nevis Pa­tri­ots (SKNP). The tour­na­ment’s newest fran­chise comes in at the ex­pense of the long-stand­ing for­mer cham­pi­ons, the Ja­maica Tallawahs (JT).

In­deed, it is sad to see the demise of the JT as they have al­ways been very com­pet­i­tive and have been favourites to take the ti­tle on a num­ber of oc­ca­sions af­ter hav­ing won the in­au­gur­al tour­na­ment 12 years ago in 2013. They al­so tast­ed suc­cess in 2016 and on­ly re­cent­ly in 2022.

Un­doubt­ed­ly, the most suc­cess­ful team is the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR) hav­ing se­cured four ti­tles since the start of the CPL but de­spite their ar­ray of stars, they some­how have not won the ti­tle since 2020. Last year, when they were odds-on favourites to win af­ter com­fort­ably de­feat­ing the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors (GAW) in a play­off but in the fi­nal, when it mat­tered most, they spec­tac­u­lar­ly suc­cumbed to the War­riors in what was con­sid­ered al­most a no con­test. That loss hand­ed the Guyanese fran­chise their first-ever CPL ti­tle af­ter be­ing the brides­maid on five oc­ca­sions.

Bar­ba­dos Roy­als (BR) won two ti­tles in 2014 and 2019 but have not per­formed with much con­sis­ten­cy in the last four years. They have had some out­stand­ing play­ers but have not come to­geth­er as a team to play the type of T20 crick­et to win a third ti­tle. On pa­per, they ap­pear to be a strong team but they con­tin­u­ous­ly flat­ter to de­ceive.

The oth­er team to have won the cov­et­ed CPL ti­tle was SKNP back in 2021. Who can for­get when Dwayne Bra­vo moved from TKR to go and lead the SKNP with many of the scribes think­ing, at the time, that he was bit­ing off more than he could chew. But, he proved many peo­ple wrong and he got the fran­chise in a po­si­tion of not on­ly play­ing good crick­et, but they played as a team and pre­vent­ed the St Lu­cia Kings (SLK) from win­ning their first ti­tle.

This year’s tour­na­ment ap­pears to be ex­treme­ly com­pet­i­tive and pick­ing a win­ner is go­ing to be more dif­fi­cult than in pre­vi­ous years as any of the six teams can win it, in­clud­ing the ABF.

Let’s start with the new team in town. They have con­tract­ed a few of the Tallawahs play­ers which in it­self will make them more com­pet­i­tive than a team with un­knowns. Bran­don King, Mo­ham­mad Amir, Imad Wasim and Fabi­an Allen are just a few names that have come across to the fran­chise and when you add names like Chris Green, Fakhar Za­man and Sam Billings to the squad, a good per­for­mance can cer­tain­ly be ex­pect­ed from them. How­ev­er, I can’t see them win­ning the ti­tle as I be­lieve they lack depth in both their bat­ting and bowl­ing but it should be a good out­ing for them.

TKR will again be a force but I don’t see them as the out­stand­ing favourites that they were from 2015 to 2020. They were al­most un­beat­able in those six years when they took the ti­tle four times dur­ing that pe­ri­od with su­perb ex­e­cu­tion of their game plan. Their crick­et was a joy to watch as their games ex­plod­ed with some ter­rif­ic crick­et.

Any team that boasts the likes of Nicholas Pooran, who is un­doubt­ed­ly in the top three of T20 bats­men in the world, and Sunil Nar­ine who is still the best spin­ner in the world in T20 crick­et must be the team to beat. Add the likes of Akeal Ho­sein, Jay­den Seales, Tim David, Ja­son Roy and vet­er­ans Kieron Pol­lard, An­dre Rus­sell and Dwayne Bra­vo, and it will take a fran­chise with a re­mark­able all-round per­for­mance to de­feat them in the play­offs. I ex­pect them to make it to the last four.

BR again has, on pa­per, a team ca­pa­ble of win­ning the 2024 edi­tion of the CPL. The prob­lem over the years is they have been up and down with their con­sis­ten­cy al­ways com­ing in­to ques­tion. This year, they again boast of hav­ing the South African trio of Quin­ton de Kock, David Miller and Ke­shav Ma­haraj; all match win­ners on their day. When you add the ex­pe­ri­ence of Rov­man Pow­ell, Ja­son Hold­er, Naveen-ul-Haq, Obed Mc­Coy and the tal­ent­ed Al­ick Athanaze to the squad, if they click ear­ly on and main­tain their form through­out the tour­na­ment, they may be the spoil­ers this year.

The de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons, GAW, tast­ed what suc­cess was last year and they will be ea­ger to re­peat es­pe­cial­ly in front of their pas­sion­ate sup­port­ers. Their in­spi­ra­tional cap­tain, Im­ran Tahir, is back and will once again lead from the front. Just as his cap­tain­cy will in­spire his troops, if his leg spin bowl­ing is as good as it was last year, his team will take some beat­ing.

Last year, the top three bats­men Saim Ayub, Rah­man­ul­lah Gur­baz and Shai Hope were mag­nif­i­cent and they scored the bulk of the runs. How­ev­er, they will al­so be hop­ing that Shim­ron Het­my­er can fi­nal­ly come good with the bat and re­pay them with some much-need­ed runs. Last year, it was their bowl­ing that was good and con­sis­tent. This year, be­sides Tahir, Dwaine Pre­to­rius, Gu­dakesh Motie and Shamar Joseph can be good with the ball and cre­ate hav­oc for op­pos­ing bats­men so they must be in with a great chance to make the fi­nal four.

Ad­mit­ted­ly, I have a soft spot for the SLK. Faf du Plessis is still a won­der­ful ex­po­nent of bat­ting when it comes to T20 crick­et and once he stays fit and plays the en­tire tour­na­ment, they can al­so make the fi­nal four. They do not pos­sess world beat­ers in the T20 for­mat but they fight for the Kings. Much will de­pend on the ex­pe­ri­enced Ros­ton Chase, David Wiese, Alzarri Joseph and Hein­rich Klaasen to sup­port du Plessis and they can cer­tain­ly cre­ate a sur­prise or two as they al­so have some good young play­ers who are will­ing to learn and du Plessis is a good teacher.

SKNP al­so has some tal­ent­ed play­ers and they can chal­lenge SLK for that fourth play­off spot. They have an all-round team of re­al qual­i­ty. In the bat­ting de­part­ment, if Evin Lewis can con­cen­trate at the top of the or­der, he can score quick­ly, and to­geth­er with An­dre Fletch­er, Sher­fane Ruther­ford, Tris­tan Stubbs, Kyle May­ers and Sikan­dar Raza, their bat­ting is com­pet­i­tive. Once they can find three bowlers to be con­sis­tent and sup­port the South African pair of An­rich Nort­je and Tabraiz Sham­si, they could well be the fly in the oint­ment.

This year ‘the biggest par­ty in sport’ seems to have five road march con­tenders and any one of the five can have their sup­port­ers jump­ing to their tune. It is go­ing to be one big par­ty.

Good luck to all the teams and to the fans, en­joy it to the max!

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.