There will be a fran­chise based in St. Lu­cia play­ing at the 2019 Hero CPL but it will not bear the St. Lu­cia Stars name.

Own­ers of the CPL on Sat­ur­day issed a news re­lease which stat­ed that: "On 7 Au­gust 2019, CPL Lim­it­ed ter­mi­nat­ed the par­tic­i­pa­tion agree­ment be­tween it and Roy­al Sports Club, LLC, the en­ti­ty that op­er­at­ed the St Lu­cia Stars fran­chise. As a re­sult of that ter­mi­na­tion, Roy­al Sports Club, LLC no longer has the right to op­er­ate a team to com­pete in the Caribbean Pre­mier League tour­na­ment and the St Lu­cia Stars will not be par­tic­i­pat­ing in the 2019 Caribbean Pre­mier League, which be­gins on Sep­tem­ber 4, 2019.

"CPL Lim­it­ed is in the process of es­tab­lish­ing and op­er­at­ing a new fran­chise to be based in St Lu­cia that will par­tic­i­pate in the 2019 Caribbean Pre­mier League. More in­for­ma­tion about that new fran­chise will fol­low in due course. CPL Lim­it­ed will be mak­ing no fur­ther pub­lic com­ment at this time."

Guardian Me­dia Sports un­der­stands that ne­go­ti­a­tions have been on­go­ing with new own­ers and CPL will over­see a tran­si­tion that will en­sure the play­ers se­lect­ed at the draft for the Stars, are in­clud­ed in the new set up.

“CPL Lim­it­ed is in the process of es­tab­lish­ing and op­er­at­ing a new fran­chise to be based in St Lu­cia that will par­tic­i­pate in the 2019 Caribbean Pre­mier League,” the state­ment con­tin­ued.

The Philadel­phia-based Roy­al Sports Club, head­ed by Jay Pandya, was an­nounced as own­ers of the fran­chise three years ago in what CPL at the time hailed as a “land­mark day” for the op­er­a­tions.

Then known as St Lu­cia Zouks, the fran­chise name was changed to St Lu­cia Stars the fol­low­ing year, and they sub­se­quent­ly en­sured a night­mare win­less cam­paign los­ing nine of their 10 match­es.

Pop­u­lar na­tion­al fig­ure and two-time T20 World Cup-win­ning skip­per, Dar­ren Sam­my, was sacked as cap­tain that sea­son and last year, Kieron Pol­lard left Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents to lead the fran­chise.

With Pol­lard de­part­ing for his na­tive Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers for the up­com­ing sea­son, Sam­my was ex­pect­ed to lead the Stars once again.

(CMC)