For­mer Trini­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR) play­er Niki­ta Miller has joined the team as an as­sis­tant coach for the up­com­ing Hero Carib­ban Pre­mier League (CPL) tour­na­ment which bowls off in T&T on Au­gust 18.

The left-arm spin­ner comes in to re­place Abishek Na­yar who was an as­sis­tant coach last sea­son with the team. Na­yar has had prob­lems get­ting from In­dia to T&T and hence Miller has been called up to take his spot.

It means that the man­age­ment team is now, head coach Bren­dan Mc­Cul­lum, Im­ran Jan (as­sis­tant coach), Miller (as­sis­tant coach) and Kevon Coop­er (bowl­ing coach). Since last year, Coop­er has been draft­ed in as the team's bowl­ing coach. Back in 2018, he took TKR to the ti­tle with a cameo to­wards the end of the in­nings in the fi­nal.

Jan has wel­comed Miller on board, say­ing: "Niki­ta has a very good work eth­ic and we look for­ward to work­ing with him to get us to where we want to be. He has been part of the set up be­fore so he un­der­stands the team's phi­los­o­phy and en­vi­ron­ment that we try to cre­ate."

To­day, the team mem­bers who are not in quar­an­tine will con­tin­ue to train at the Queen's Park Oval, St Clair Port-of-Spain. The TKR has been the on­ly team spared the ef­fects of the COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion as they have all their play­ers avail­able to them for the tour­na­ment. Every oth­er team has lost play­ers for one rea­son or the oth­er.

The six play­ers who are in quar­an­tine and still self-iso­lat­ing in their rooms are Col­in Munro, Muham­mad Ali Khan, Tim Seifert, Fawad Ahmed, Praven Tambe, and Sikan­dar Raza. On Mon­day they will then get their sec­ond Covid test be­fore be­ing al­lowed to min­gle in groups of three or four. At least they will be able to come out of their rooms rather than be­ing stuck in there.

One play­er who wish­es to re­main anony­mous says that the treat­ment has been up to mark thus far but the walls are clos­ing in. "The treat­ment has been good be­cause you get every­thing that you need and you have some­one to take care of the laun­dry and stuff. How­ev­er, with each pass­ing day, the walls are cav­ing in. When you are a sports­man you are ac­cus­tomed to be­ing on the out­side and this is now be­com­ing dif­fi­cult. I agree with the process be­cause we can't take any chances but I can't wait to get out there to the crick­et ground."

The tour­na­ment gets un­der­way on Au­gust 18 and will see 33 games played at two venues in T&T. The first match will see last year’s run­ners-up, the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors, take on the TKR. The fi­nal will take place on Sep­tem­ber 10.