Enoch Lewis: Leeward Islands Players To Feature In Domestic Matches Ahead Of Regional Super50

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By Neto Baptiste

Players attached to the Leeward Islands Hurricanes franchise for the 2021 regional cricket season are set to feature in next month’s Super 40 cricket competition to be staged by the Antigua and Barbuda Cricket Association (ABCA).

This is according to President of the Leeward Islands Cricket Board (LICB) and former national cricketer, Enoch Lewis, who said the initiative will provide the players with some much needed playing time ahead of the scaled down Super50.

“Once the players get here the idea is that we are going to assign them to different teams. We are trying to create some competition so they are going to be playing with these teams ahead of the Super50 so every weekend they will be playing with the teams to which they are assigned and during the course of the week they will do some training and we would have some practice matches during the course of the week as well,” he said.

“We don’t want to overload any particular team so we are trying to create balance so for argument sake, a player might have played with team A for the last three years when he comes up but if team A already has two or three of those players then we are going to assign those other two player to some other teams so we create some balance,” he added.

Lewis, a former opening bat for the sub-regional squad, said the initiative is being planned alongside the national association as they seek to avoid the creation of an unfair advantage for any one team in local tournament.

“We are working through the Antigua and Barbuda Cricket Association and actually, we have had requests coming directly from teams asking for particular players so there is some dialog. We don’t want to deal with it in a particular way, we want to go through the local association so that we create some balance to the teams,” he said.

According to Lewis, the move has so far, caught favour with majority of the local teams.

“I am not hearing that there is any real pushback and as a matter of a fact I am happy to hear they are welcoming the suggestion that these players actually participate in our league and they would be doing so for the entire season which is expected to be finished just ahead of the Super 50 so we will have these players playing a lot of cricket ahead of the Super 50 so they shouldn’t be short of cricket at all,” he said.

The Regional Super 50 is slated for February here with matches at both the Sir Vivian Richards Cricket Ground and the Coolidge Cricket Ground.

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