The first match of the CPL “LIVE” se­ries, a broad­cast of a clas­sic Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) game with new com­men­tary added live, is the most suc­cess­ful live stream in the tour­na­ment’s his­to­ry with mil­lions watch­ing around the world on Tues­day.

The match be­tween Ja­maica Tallawahs and T&T Red Steel, which was played in 2013, was re­broad­cast with com­men­tary added live from around the world, with the com­men­tary team in iso­la­tion. World-class com­men­ta­tors, Ian Bish­op, Dan­ny Mor­ri­son, Tom Moody, Daren Gan­ga and Alex Jor­dan were not told which game they would be watch­ing so they could re­act to the ac­tion as if it was live. This fun twist was en­joyed by fans around the world – many of whom were con­vinced the game was be­ing played live!

With the cur­rent COVID-19 cri­sis hav­ing a huge im­pact on the world, and on sport in par­tic­u­lar, the CPL has teamed up with stream­ing ser­vice Grabyo who used their state of the art soft­ware to al­low the com­men­ta­tors to watch the game whilst adding com­ments live from their homes in Trinidad and To­ba­go, Aus­tralia, Bar­ba­dos. It was a tru­ly glob­al en­deav­or and a world first.

With every­one around the world urged to stay at home this unique way of get­ting to ex­pe­ri­ence sport was some­thing that was warm­ly wel­comed by crick­et fans and the CPL plans to show a se­ries of clas­sic match­es with brand new com­men­tary over the com­ing weeks.

Chris Wat­son, CPL’s Mar­ket­ing Di­rec­tor, said: “We were de­light­ed with the re­ac­tion to the first match in this se­ries and that we have been able to bring some much need­ed en­ter­tain­ment to CPL fans around the world. It was great fun to re­live a fan­tas­tic match from the past and we are look­ing for­ward to do­ing more of the same over the com­ing weeks. We are tru­ly grate­ful to our won­der­ful com­men­ta­tors, who have giv­en up their time and have en­tered in­to the spir­it of de­liv­er­ing this unique sport­ing ex­pe­ri­ence! ”

Re­sults

T&T Red Steel 133 for 8 v Ja­maica Ta­lawahs 134/7 won by 3 wick­ets (With no balls re­main­ing).