In search of more regional talents, Cricket West Indies is slated to host a Twenty20 tournament in May 2025 solely for regional players.
Director of Cricket Miles Bascombe indicated that the precise details have not yet been decided, but it was seen as a necessary step given that the privately run Caribbean Premier League, which started in 2013, is not the ideal platform to unearth grassroots talent.
Several players and pundits have called for reintroducing a regional tournament to act as a feeder for CPL and, ultimately, the West Indies team.
“There is some recognition that the CPL may not necessarily be where those stars would emerge, so we are working with CPL to have an emerging players regional T20 tournament,” Bascombe revealed during a CWI press conference in Barbados Monday.
“We recognise in terms of T20 cricket that we need a way to find our next crop of T20 players. We have had success in T20 cricket and I’m sure the head coach [Darren Sammy] is anticipating some more success as we play at home in this (T20) World Cup. But we generally still have to work hard at finding our next crop of emerging T20 stars,” he added.
News of the tournament initially came to the fore last December when CWI vice-president Azim Bassarath and Caribbean Premier League CEO Pete Russell indicated that the two bodies were in discussions about a secondary T20 spectacle.
Russell, at that point, hinted at the prospect that the emerging player’s tournament could come to fruition.
“We feel that’s an important part of any cricket system, even CPL. So, we want to support that in as big a way as possible,” Russell said.
The last Caribbean Twenty20 was held in January 2013, when Trinidad and Tobago defeated Guyana by nine wickets in St. Lucia.
