For­mer T&T bats­man and coach Im­ran Jan has been re­tained by de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR) for the 2019 Hero Caribbean Pro­fes­sion­al League (CPL), which gets un­der­way on Sep­tem­ber 4 in Port-of-Spain

With all the changes made to the man­age­ment team, in­clud­ing the re­moval of head coach Si­mon Katich, spec­u­la­tion was rife that Jan would have fol­lowed the Aus­tralian out of the set­up. How­ev­er, he was giv­en a con­tract for the sixth year run­ning, with a high-rank­ing TKR of­fi­cial say­ing that he has done a won­der­ful job as an as­sis­tant coach over the last few years.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Jan con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia Sports that he had signed his con­tract and will be as­sist­ing new head coach Bren­don Mc­Cul­lum.

Mc­Cul­lum, a vet­er­an New Zealan­der who re­tired from the one-day in­ter­na­tion­al game fol­low­ing a re­cent stint with the Ki­wis at the 2019 ICC World Cup in Eng­land, has been a reg­u­lar with the TKR over the last two sea­sons, play­ing an in­stru­men­tal role in the T&T fran­chise will­ing back-to-back ti­tles.

Jan said: “I am thrilled to be re­tained for my sixth sea­son with the TKR fran­chise. Equal­ly ex­cit­ed to be work­ing along­side the new­ly-ap­point­ed head coach, the leg­end Bren­don “Baz” Mc­Cul­lum as his as­sis­tant.

“We are two-time de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons and I am su­per ex­cit­ed about win­ning a hat-trick of ti­tles. We at TKR are a fam­i­ly and look for­ward to meet­ing and work­ing with the new play­ers soon.”

Al­so keep­ing his role in the team’s man­age­ment is an­oth­er Trinida­di­an, Col­in Bor­de, who is the most suc­cess­ful man­ag­er in the his­to­ry of the CPL with three ti­tles. He won his first ti­tle un­der the T&T Red Steel ban­ner and then fol­lowed up with ti­tles won by TKR in 2017 and 2018. The league bowled off in 2013.

The 2019 Hero CPL will bowl off in T&T on Sep­tem­ber 4 with the TKR com­ing up against St Kitts/Nevis Pa­tri­ots. This will be fol­lowed by a clash against Ja­maica two days lat­er and on Sep­tem­ber 8, TKR bat­tle the re-in­stalled St. Lu­cia Zouks. Af­ter three home games, they hit the road be­fore com­ing back home to­wards the end of the round-robin phase to play an­oth­er two games.

Qual­i­fi­er II and the fi­nals will al­so be played in T&T t the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba, San Fer­nan­do.