In a his­toric move, there will be In­di­an flavour for the first time in the Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) as leg-spin­ner Pravin Tambe at the age of 48 is set to play for the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR) in the 2020 edi­tion.

With the Board of Con­trol for Crick­et in In­dia (BC­CI) not al­low­ing any of their play­ers to play in fran­chise tour­na­ments out­side the In­di­an Pre­mier League (IPL) Tambe's in­clu­sion in the CPL has cre­at­ed a lot of at­ten­tion.

Guardian Me­dia Sports un­der­stands that Tambe was picked up in the draft on Wednes­day by the TKR man­age­ment. Tambe a late bloomer was picked up by the Kolkata Knight Rid­ers for the 2020 In­di­an Pre­mier League (IPL) but was de­nied the chance to be as­so­ci­at­ed with the team as the Board of Con­trol for Crick­et in In­dia (BC­CI) dis­qual­i­fied him.

Ac­cord­ing to the Crick­et Times, the rea­son for Tambe’s dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion was his in­volve­ment in T10 League – a ten-over for­mat tour­na­ment in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates launched and owned by T Ten Sports Man­age­ment. As per the rules of the Board of Crick­et Con­trol in In­dia (BC­CI), a play­er can on­ly par­tic­i­pate in the over­seas league af­ter his re­tire­ment, and Tambe did re­tire in 2018 by in­form­ing his state board Mum­bai Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion (MCA). There­fore, he was legal­ly ready to par­tic­i­pate in the T10 League. How­ev­er, af­ter the con­clu­sion of the 10-overs com­pe­ti­tion, Tambe came back and with­drew his de­ci­sion.

The IPL chair­man Bri­jesh Pa­tel in­formed the fran­chise KKR about the de­ci­sion re­gard­ing Tambe.

How­ev­er, this year he then joined an­oth­er 536 play­ers who threw their hat in­to the ring at the CPL 2020 draft and was suc­cess­ful. The leg-spin­ner nev­er even played for his City be­fore he was plucked out of ob­scu­ri­ty by the Ra­jasthan Roy­als in 2013. He was 41 years at the time and very pro­lif­ic in T20 and T10 tour­na­ments. He switched from medi­um pace to leg-spin and this changed the for­tunes of the ca­reer.

Af­ter mak­ing a great IPL de­but in 2013, the club crick­eter Tambe went on to be­come the lead­ing wick­et-tak­er in the Cham­pi­ons League T20 lat­er in the year. He picked up 12 wick­ets in the tour­na­ment at an av­er­age of 6.5. His per­for­mances that year earned him his maid­en call-up for the Mum­bai team in the 2013–14 Ran­ji Tro­phy.

In the 2014 IPL sea­son, Tambe picked up a bril­liant hat-trick against Kolkata Knight Rid­ers. Ever since he was on the KKR radar and when picked up by the fran­chise he was de­nied per­mis­sion to play by the BC­CI.

In 33 IPL match­es, he has tak­en 28 wick­ets at an av­er­age of 30.46 and an econ­o­my rate of 7.75.

At 48, Tambe be­came the old­est play­er to be bought at the IPL auc­tion when KKR snapped him up for a base price of US$27,000. Tambe has al­ready fea­tured in the tour­na­ment, with a to­tal of 33 ap­pear­ances over four sea­sons (2013 to 2016) for three dif­fer­ent fran­chis­es - Ra­jasthan Roy­als, Gu­jarat Li­ons, and Sun­ris­ers Hy­der­abad. He has a tal­ly of 28 wick­ets, 15 of which he picked in the 2014 sea­son while turn­ing out for Ra­jasthan Roy­als.

Tambe fol­lows for­mer Test play­er Yu­vraj Singh as the sec­ond In­di­an play­er to play in T20 leagues out­side the coun­try. Yu­vraj played in the Glob­al T20 tour­na­ment last year in Cana­da.

Off-spin­ner Harb­ha­jan Singh, who hasn't played for In­dia since 2016 but is yet to re­tire, has his name in The Hun­dred draft in Eng­land, how­ev­er, just be­fore the draft, he took his name off the list in favour of con­tin­u­ing to play for CSK in the IPL.

The Pak­istani-born Amer­i­can play­er Muham­mad Ali Khan has al­so been snapped by at the draft and will re­turn to the TKR for his third sea­son. The fast bowler who has won the hearts of the peo­ple in Trinidad will be keen to get play again, as all the match­es are card­ed for this coun­try.

The CPL is sched­uled to be held be­tween Au­gust 18 and Sep­tem­ber 10 be­hind closed doors in T&T. On Thurs­day, the Cab­i­net was due to con­sid­er note and fi­nal ap­proval is ex­pect­ed to come short­ly.