SPORTS DESK

gm­sports@guardian.co.tt

Massy Group has con­firmed that they will be the ti­tle spon­sor for the in­au­gur­al Women’s Caribbean Pre­mier League (WC­PL) which gets un­der­way on Au­gust 31 in St Kitts and Nevis.

The Massy Women’s Caribbean Pre­mier League (WC­PL) will fea­ture three teams, the Bar­ba­dos Roy­als, Guyana Ama­zon War­riors and the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers. The teams will play each oth­er in four ex­cit­ing Twen­ty20 match­es at Warn­er Park, one of the fastest-scor­ing grounds in world crick­et. The teams will be cap­tained by Hay­ley Matthews (Bar­ba­dos Roy­als), Stafanie Tay­lor (Guyana Ama­zon War­riors) and De­an­dra Dot­tin (Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers).

The an­nounce­ment was made at a press Con­fer­ence held at the Pres­i­dent’s Box at the Queen’s Park Oval in Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Each of the three Massy WC­PL teams will have the best play­ers from the re­gion as well as ex­cit­ing over­seas play­ers to round out their squads as women’s crick­et is giv­en huge ex­po­sure across the Caribbean and around the world.

“As one of the largest em­ploy­ers in the re­gion, a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of our work­force is com­prised of women. For some com­pa­nies such as Massy Stores which op­er­ates from 59 lo­ca­tions across the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean, the work­force is on av­er­age 70 per cent fe­male. That means that cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for women to grow and de­vel­op is in­te­gral to our busi­ness and in­her­ent to our pur­pose. With spon­sor­ship sup­port which we hope will con­tin­ue to grow for years to come, we be­lieve that CPL will con­tin­ue to de­vel­op this tour­na­ment to cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for pro­fes­sion­al, Caribbean, fe­male ath­letes,” com­ment­ed Marc Ros­tant, Se­nior Vice Pres­i­dent, Massy Mo­tors who spoke on be­half of the Massy Group to an­nounce the spon­sor­ship.

Jamie Stew­art, CPL’s Com­mer­cial Di­rec­tor, said: “When we set out to cre­ate the Women’s CPL, it was im­por­tant to find a part­ner that would help build the pro­file and stature of the game and play­ers around the re­gion, with the ul­ti­mate goal of mak­ing them house­hold faces. In Massy, one of the re­gion’s great com­pa­nies, we feel the WC­PL has the per­fect part­ner. Massy Group, via their sto­ries span­ning the east­ern Caribbean, touch­es more peo­ple each day than any oth­er com­pa­ny in the re­gion. We thank the Group and the Stores and Au­to di­vi­sions for be­liev­ing in the vi­sion, and look for­ward to work­ing with them to give the re­gion’s fe­male stars the sup­port and ex­po­sure they de­serve.”

With Matthews and Tay­lor rat­ed in the top 10 T20 all-rounders in the world and Dot­tin one of the most de­struc­tive bat­ters in the women’s game, all three play­ers have shown their qual­i­ty for the West In­dies and in do­mes­tic com­pe­ti­tions around the globe.

The teams have been draft­ed from a pool of play­ers that was put to­geth­er by the Crick­et West In­dies se­lec­tion com­mit­tee and the 33 crick­eters picked to rep­re­sent the best tal­ent from across the re­gion with the squads full of ex­pe­ri­enced in­ter­na­tion­als as well as the next gen­er­a­tion of fe­male play­ers.

Each team will al­so sign three ex­cit­ing over­seas play­ers bring­ing the to­tal squad size to 14 and fur­ther bol­ster­ing the qual­i­ty of crick­eters on show in this ex­cit­ing new event. These over­seas sign­ings will be an­nounced in the com­ing weeks.

Ricky Sker­ritt, Crick­et West In­dies Pres­i­dent, said, “This in­au­gur­al Women’s ver­sion of the CPL rep­re­sents a huge up­ward step for West In­dies crick­et. I am grate­ful to all those in CPL and CWI who made it hap­pen, es­pe­cial­ly the three pi­o­neer­ing fran­chis­es who have so will­ing­ly got on board.”

Pe­te Rus­sell, Hero CPL’s CEO, said: “A Women’s CPL is the next log­i­cal step as we grow the brand, and we are very pleased that we have been able to make this a re­al­i­ty in 2022. We are grate­ful to the CWI, the Bar­ba­dos Roy­als, the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors and the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers for work­ing with us on this ground­break­ing tour­na­ment and we look for­ward to show­cas­ing the tremen­dous skills of all these tal­ent­ed play­ers.”