KINGSTON, Ja­maica – Ja­maica Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, Bil­ly Heav­en, be­lieves the agree­ment be­tween Crick­et West In­dies and the Caribbean Pre­mier League needs to be re­vis­it­ed, in or­der to en­sure en­hanced re­turns of in­vest­ment for the re­gion.

Heav­en, al­so a CWI di­rec­tor, said the agree­ment struck 12 years ago ahead of the in­au­gur­al CPL sea­son was “dis­ad­van­ta­geous to Ja­maica” and oth­er re­gion­al coun­tries as it did not pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant enough val­ue.

The ad­min­is­tra­tor was speak­ing here re­cent­ly amid pub­lic out­cry over the pull­out of the Ja­maica Tallawahs fran­chise, which left the coun­try with­out a CPL pres­ence since the tour­na­ment was found­ed.

“It (agree­ment) is dis­ad­van­ta­geous to Ja­maica. It is prej­u­di­cial to crick­et in Ja­maica and that agree­ment, in the first in­stance, spans 30 years,” the Ob­serv­er news­pa­per quot­ed Heav­en as say­ing at an event here.

“It came in­to be­ing in 2012 and when you look at the re­turn from that – in the first year, the agree­ment brings US$1.375 mil­lion (JA$211.8 mil­lion) and at the end of 30 years, it is US$1.75 mil­lion.

“There’s no in­crease what­so­ev­er, even to keep pace with the in­fla­tion­ary ef­fect.

“So, we have to go back to look at that agree­ment to make it more work­able for the re­gion, in­clud­ing Ja­maica.”

Even with the Tallawahs fran­chise present, Ja­maica en­dured a strained re­la­tion with the tour­na­ment in re­cent years, and had not host­ed a sin­gle match since 2019.

And in re-sell­ing the fran­chise to the league, own­er Kris Per­saud, cit­ed lack of gov­ern­ment sup­port as one of the ma­jor fac­tors be­hind the de­ci­sion.

How­ev­er, Heav­en said while he was “dis­ap­point­ed” Ja­maicans would be un­able to watch CPL crick­et live, he ques­tioned the role of CPL in ac­tu­al crick­et de­vel­op­ment across the re­gion.

“CPL and all these fran­chis­es are ex­cep­tion­al but they speak to an en­ter­tain­ment val­ue, per se,” he con­tin­ued.

“They do not ad­dress the el­e­ment of de­vel­op­ment in the way that you want to de­vel­op your prod­uct called crick­et. CPL does not do that, nei­ther do they put back monies in­to the de­vel­op­ment of crick­et in the ter­ri­to­ries.”

The ab­sence of CPL ac­tion in Ja­maica has drawn crit­i­cism from glob­al Twen­ty20 star An­dre Rus­sell and West In­dies T20 cap­tain, Rov­man Pow­ell, with both Ja­maicans urg­ing talks be­tween gov­ern­ment and CWI.

In de­fend­ing gov­ern­ment’s ac­tions, Sports Min­is­ter Olivia Grange, said it had been nec­es­sary to bal­ance in­vest­ment in the Tallawahs fran­chise with sup­port for oth­er sport­ing dis­ci­plines.

“We have sought to pro­vide spe­cial sup­port to the Tallawahs at the lev­el that our funds may per­mit,” Grange was quot­ed as say­ing at the same event.

“The Tallawahs re­quire more than we can pro­vide but I’m sure the Tallawahs and their ex­is­tence was not de­pend­ing on the Gov­ern­ment of Ja­maica to bankroll them.

“But in or­der to give them more, we would have to cut fund­ing to the more than 40 na­tion­al sports fed­er­a­tions such as foot­ball, net­ball, and track and field, which de­pend on the Gov­ern­ment to run their pro­grammes, and have been re­quest­ing ad­di­tion­al funds which we are chal­lenged to pro­vide.”

CMC