Suc­cess­ful Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR) cap­tain Dwayne Bra­vo has left and will now line up for the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents at the 2019 Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League T20 tour­na­ment.

Bra­vo sent out a mes­sage on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day say­ing that he will not be in­volved with the dou­ble de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons TKR for the up­com­ing CPL. At the CPL draft in Lon­don to­day the Tri­dents will an­nounce Bra­vo as their US$160,000 the first pick.

The news came as a shock to lo­cal crick­et fans who shared their frus­tra­tion on so­cial me­dia. Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the new Tri­dents own­ers have al­so ac­quired the ser­vices of Afghanistan coach Phil Sim­mons, who said he will not be seek­ing a re­new­al of his con­tract af­ter the Crick­et World Cup which ends on Ju­ly 14 in Eng­land.

The Trinida­di­an Sim­mons was the coach of the St. Kitts/Nevis Pa­tri­ots last year at the CPL.

Two weeks ago Guardian Me­dia broke the sto­ry that Ke­iron Pol­lard was com­ing back home to play for the TKR. It is high­ly like­ly that Pol­lard who iron­i­cal­ly cap­tained the Tri­dents in the ear­ly years of the CPL will be made the cap­tain of the TKR. Pol­lard played for the St. Lu­cia Stars in last year's CPL.

With Bra­vo mov­ing on, the TKR can re­tain a min­i­mum of three (3) or a max­i­mum of four (4) of the fol­low­ing West In­di­an play­ers: Sunil Nar­ine, Dar­ren Bra­vo, De­nesh Ramdin, Khary Pierre, Javon Sear­les, Niki­ta Miller, Kevon Coop­er, An­der­son Phillip

Shan­non Gabriel, Ter­rance Hinds and Aamir Jan­goo.

Mean­while, the Tri­dents is now owned by the USA-based CMG Com­pa­nies (CMG) leads a team of lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors in the ac­qui­si­tion of the crick­et fran­chise in Bar­ba­dos.

CMG, through its af­fil­i­ates, pri­mar­i­ly owns and op­er­ates fran­chise restau­rants, ho­tels, and re­al es­tate across Amer­i­ca and is one of the largest own­ers of a ma­jor fast-food fran­chise.

CMG is al­so no stranger to sports, with spon­sor­ship deals with NBA teams in­clud­ing the Dal­las Mav­er­icks, sev­er­al sim­i­lar ini­tia­tives at the col­le­giate and grass­roots lev­el, in­vest­ment in MASL’s Dal­las Side­kicks, along with past own­er­ship the Ja­maica Tallawahs.

The move comes as the Tri­dent’s for­mer own­er Vi­jay Mallya con­tin­ues to bat­tle against ex­tra­di­tion from the Unit­ed King­dom to In­dia, where he is al­leged to have com­mit­ted bank fraud, with au­thor­i­ties try­ing to re­cov­er mil­lions in un­paid loans.

CMG’s takeover al­so comes as good news for Tri­dents’ play­ers, who had not been ful­ly com­pen­sat­ed for 2018.

The prin­ci­pal of CMG Man­ish Pa­tel said the de­ci­sion to in­vest in the Tri­dents was a good busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ty.

“Sell­ing our own­er­ship rights of the win­ning Ja­maica Tallawahs held from 2014-2016 was the right move for us as a busi­ness, but we missed be­ing in­volved in the re­gion and in CPL.

“When the chance to pur­chase the Tri­dents came along we were de­light­ed, es­pe­cial­ly with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to bring good strong lo­cal part­ners on­board. We can’t wait to get start­ed at en­hanc­ing the pro­file of this team on and off the field and to bring­ing a com­pre­hen­sive sports en­ter­tain­ment pack­age to Bar­ba­dos. We will work very hard to make Bar­ba­di­ans proud of their team,” Pa­tel said.

Al­so, the team named West In­dies Test and One Day In­ter­na­tion­al cap­tain Ja­son Hold­er as its mar­quee play­er. The 27-year-old Hold­er cap­tained the Tri­dents last year.

In last year’s CPL, the Tri­dents fin­ished bot­tom of the ta­ble, hav­ing won two and lost eight of their 10 games played.

It was the Tri­dents’ worst show­ing in the six-year his­to­ry of the CPL.

The hold­er is the top-ranked all-rounder in the world in the ICC’s Test rank­ings and is the sixth-ranked all-rounder in ODI crick­et.