The Com­bined Cam­pus­es and Col­leges (CCC) will re­turn to the Re­gion­al First Class crick­et com­pe­ti­tion next year af­ter an eight-year ab­sence.

This was con­firmed by Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) Di­rec­tor of Crick­et, Miles Bas­combe at Sat­ur­day’s T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) awards cer­e­mo­ny at Cen­tre Point Mall in Ch­agua­nas.

CCC will be joined by the West In­dies Acad­e­my (WI-A) as both in­sti­tu­tions will merge with the six fran­chis­es to ex­pand the num­ber of teams to eight. This will be the first time since 2011 that eight teams will play in the tour­na­ment when the Eng­land Li­ons (Eng­land A-team) took part in the First Class sea­son.

In ad­di­tion to, the ex­pan­sion of teams in the First-Class tour­na­ment, Bas­combe said CWI plans to strength­en the struc­ture of the fran­chis­es.

“We have re­cent­ly added, in the last sea­son, phys­io­ther­a­pists and strength and con­di­tion­ing coach­es,” said Bas­combe who stressed why that move is im­por­tant.

“So now every fran­chise has those sports sci­ence and med­i­cine pro­fes­sion­als and the plan is to go a step fur­ther hav­ing the dis­cus­sions with the head coach, tech­ni­cal di­rec­tors where they ex­ist and CEOs to en­sure that the pro­grammes at the fran­chise are aligned with what Crick­et West In­dies is ex­pect­ing for that se­nior path­way in­to the in­ter­na­tion­al team.”

Cur­rent­ly, both CCC and WI-A play in the Su­per 50. WI-A, then called the West In­dies Emerg­ing Play­ers, won the com­pe­ti­tion back in 2019 while CCC topped the 50-Over com­pe­ti­tion the sea­son be­fore.

The Acad­e­my got a taste of first-class crick­et this year dur­ing the Headley-Weekes se­ries, played at the end of the re­gion­al Four-Day Cham­pi­onships, up­set­ting Team Headley be­fore draw­ing with Team Weekes.

Dur­ing those match­es, Kevlon An­der­son (153), Kirk McKen­zie (221) and Kevin Wick­ham (121) made names for them­selves, but it is ex­pect­ed that the trio will be­come fix­tures with their fran­chis­es in the up­com­ing sea­son.

Kirk McKen­zie, 22, who made his Test de­but against In­dia this year, will be ex­pect­ed to have a huge role with Ja­maica Scor­pi­ons in the up­com­ing sea­son while An­der­son will look to have a big­ger role with the Guyana Harpy Ea­gles. Wick­ham had a few match­es with Bar­ba­dos Pride this sea­son and will be look­ing to ce­ment his place with the 24-time cham­pi­ons.

Speak­ing ahead of the Re­gion­al Su­per 50 Cup which will be staged in T&T from Oc­to­ber 17, Bas­combe was thrilled by some of the changes for the com­pe­ti­tion that will be held at three venues - the Queen’s Park Oval in St Clair, Port-of-Spain, Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Sport and Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre (UWI SPEC).

“I'm more ex­cit­ed about the change of for­mat. We have changed the for­mat from hav­ing two groups of four to a full round-robin,” said Bas­combe. “I think that is a more bal­anced way of eval­u­at­ing per­for­mances through­out the tour­na­ment and you know it's al­ways bet­ter when you get every team play­ing against every oth­er team."