ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – The An­tigua & Bar­bu­da Fal­cons have named Paul Nixon as their new head coach for the 2025 sea­son of the Re­pub­lic Bank Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL).

Nixon, a for­mer Eng­land wick­et­keep­er, re­places for­mer West In­dies bats­man Shiv­nar­ine Chan­der­paul, who was head coach dur­ing the 2024 tour­na­ment.

The 54-year-old has held sev­er­al head coach­ing po­si­tions around the world and pre­vi­ous­ly coached the Ja­maica Tallawahs in the CPL.

Nixon said he was ho­n­oured to have been se­lect­ed and hoped to lead the Fal­cons to suc­cess in this year’s com­pe­ti­tion.

“It is a great ho­n­our to ac­cept the in­vi­ta­tion to serve as head coach for An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Fal­cons this year.

“The Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) is a won­der­ful com­pe­ti­tion that has sig­nif­i­cant­ly ben­e­fit­ed West In­di­an crick­et. The CPL’s vi­brant at­mos­phere, star-stud­ded line­ups, and high-qual­i­ty en­ter­tain­ment have cap­ti­vat­ed au­di­ences and sparked a re­newed en­thu­si­asm for the sport,” Nixon said in a state­ment.

“Hav­ing achieved suc­cess with Ja­maica pre­vi­ous­ly, I ea­ger­ly an­tic­i­pate a suc­cess­ful 2025 cam­paign, sup­port­ed by great play­ers and a first-class sup­port staff.”

Kris Per­saud, own­er and founder of the Fal­cons, and gen­er­al man­ag­er, Jeff Miller wel­comed Nixon to the fran­chise, and thanked Chan­der­paul for his con­tri­bu­tion.

They said in a joint state­ment: “We want to wel­come Paul to the An­tigua & Bar­bu­da Fal­cons as we pre­pare for the 2025 Re­pub­lic Bank CPL.

“He is an out­stand­ing head coach with an ex­cel­lent track record. We be­lieve he will have a ma­jor im­pact and will bring his en­er­gy and en­thu­si­asm to the Fal­cons fam­i­ly as we look to im­prove on last year’s per­for­mance.

“We al­so want to sin­cere­ly thank Shiv, an out­stand­ing leg­end of West In­dies crick­et, for the work he did with the fran­chise.”

CMC