ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – Crick­et West In­dies pres­i­dent, Dr Kishore Shal­low, has de­scribed the re­gion­al gov­ern­ing body’s re­la­tion­ship with the Caribbean Pre­mier League as “ex­tra­or­di­nary”, in the wake of an­oth­er suc­cess­ful edi­tion of the Twen­ty20 tour­na­ment.

He said the col­lab­o­ra­tion had re­sult­ed in ac­cel­er­at­ed crick­et de­vel­op­ment across the re­gion, al­low­ing tal­ent to be har­nessed and ex­pressed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

“The re­la­tion­ship be­tween the CPL and CWI has been noth­ing short of ex­tra­or­di­nary,” said Shal­low, who as­sumed the top CWI post ear­li­er this year.

“To­geth­er, we con­tin­ue to el­e­vate Caribbean crick­et, show­cas­ing our re­gion’s best tal­ent to glob­al mar­kets, hon­ing the skills of emerg­ing tal­ents, while in­vig­o­rat­ing the spir­it of the game among fans.

“The Gov­ern­ment of Guyana and oth­er host coun­tries should al­so be cred­it­ed for their con­tin­ued com­mit­ment and sup­port of this amaz­ing prod­uct.”

The tour­na­ment wrapped up on Sun­day night in George­town with Guyana Ama­zon War­riors fit­ting­ly clinch­ing their first-ever ti­tle with a dom­i­nant nine-wick­et vic­to­ry over mul­ti­ple-time cham­pi­ons Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers.

In a lop­sided fi­nal at the Guyana Na­tion­al Sta­di­um, Ama­zon War­riors bun­dled out TKR for 94 and then stormed to their tar­get with six overs left.

The vic­to­ry rep­re­sent­ed a mas­sive achieve­ment for the hosts af­ter five pre­vi­ous failed trips to the fi­nal – in 2013, 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2019.

Ama­zon War­riors had com­fort­ably topped the group stage af­ter los­ing on­ly one of their ten games, and Shal­low praised the fran­chise for their con­sis­ten­cy.

“I would like to ex­tend my sin­cere con­grat­u­la­tions to Im­ran Tahir and Guyana Ama­zon War­riors, who emerged as the cham­pi­ons of CPL 2023,” he said.

“Their con­sis­ten­cy through­out the tour­na­ment demon­strat­ed the spir­it of crick­et and the depth of tal­ent that ex­ists with­in the Caribbean, with con­tri­bu­tions from young­sters like Kevlon An­der­son and Matthew Nan­du when they got their op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“It was heart­en­ing to al­so wit­ness the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty ac­cept­ed by some of the se­nior play­ers, in­clud­ing Play­er of the Tour­na­ment, Shai Hope, along with Ro­mario Shep­herd and Gu­dakesh Motie.”

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