CPL Season Overview

CricViz analyst Freddie Wilde identifies some key points ahead of the 2020 Caribbean Premier League season. 

The Trinidad Premier League

The pandemic has forced this year’s CPL to be played in its entirety in Trinidad and Tobago where all the matches will be played behind closed doors at the Queen’s Park Oval in Port of Spain and Brian Lara Cricket Academy in Tarouba. 

Straight semi finals

The tournament schedule has been slightly modified with the Page-McIntrye play off system—where the teams who finish first and second have a double chance at qualification for the final—being replaced by a straight semi final structure in order to reduce the number of fixtures. The group stage still features a full set of 10 matches per team. 

Four out of six squads overhauled

The CPL Draft, held in July, saw two of the six teams experience major turnover in their squads. Only Guyana Amazon Warriors and Trinbago Knight Riders held onto more than half their players. 

Mass personnell changes post-draft

Even at the best of times the CPL is a league often beset by last minute squad changes and patchy availability due to clashes with international series and the T20 Blast. Now, in the age of COVID-19 that particular trend has been exacerbated with as many as 16 players being withdrawn from the original post-draft squads due to issues around Visas, travel restrictions and, in the case of Fabian Allen, missing the chartered flight. 

That means the only team unaffected by post-draft withdrawals is Trinbago Knight Riders. With the Tridents, Patriots and Zouks losing four players, the Tallawahs losing three and the Amazon Warriors just the one.

However, normally CPL squad instability is a theme throughout the season itself with players coming and going but this year things will be different with the eventual finalised squads set to remain constant throughout the season itself.  

So fraught and frenzied have the changes to squads been in advance of the season it has at times been difficult to keep up but now at least, with the squads quarantining in Trinidad and Tobago, the squads are set to remain constant. 

Two venues in four phases

The extraordinary circumstances in which the tournament will be played means the fixture list is very condensed. There will be two matches per day on every day of the tournament with occasional rest days with no matches. The entire tournament will take just 24 days from start to finish with 33 matches being played across 17 match-days. 

The first ten matches will be played in Tarouba, the second ten matches will be played in Port of Spain before the tournament returns to Tarouba to complete the group stage and then back to Port of Spain for the semis and final. 

Worn pitches likely to benefit spinners

With 33 matches being played across two venues in just 17 days it is likely that the pitches being used will become worn and tired. This is likely to produce lower scores than is typical at the two venues while spinners and slower ball bowlers may prove more effective than normal. 

When the draft took place the teams knew that the tournament would be being played in a condensed period of time at two venues in Trinidad and Tobago and understandably looked to pack their squads with spin options. The only side who did not do this was St Kitts and Nevis Patriots who only have three spinners in their squad while all the other teams have at least five and St Lucia Zouks have as many as seven. 

Uneven day and day-night splits

The fixtures are not allocated in a manner that produces an even spread of day and day-night matches. Some teams’ fixtures are clearly weighted towards day or day-night matches with Trinbago Knight Riders (8 day matches) and St Lucia Zouks (7 day matches) playing the majority of their matches in the day while Guyana Amazon Warriors (1 day match) playing the majority of their matches at night. St Kitts and Nevis Patriots (6 day matches) are slightly day-heavy while Jamaica Tallawahs (3 day matches) are night-heavy. The only team with an even split of day and day-night matches is the Barbados Tridents.

The schedule has been designed like this so as to get the two teams with Indian ownership – Trinbago and St Lucia – playing more in the day to suit the Indian TV audience. The day matches will begin at 7.30pm in India while the day-night matches will start at 3.30am in India. 

It will be interesting to see how the nature of cricket changes in the day-night matches compared to the day games. The day-night games will always be played on a used pitch from the morning match which is likely to benefit the spinners and make scores lower. However, the dew in the evening could go some way to mitigating that change. 

The Emerging Player Rule

This season in the CPL the tournament regulations state that each squad must contain at least two ‘Emerging Players’ and that across the campaign those players must play a minimum of five matches between them. Emerging Players are players under the age of 23. 

It will be very interesting to see how and when teams deploy their emerging players. Ideally, these players will find a place in the team in their own right but it may be that teams struggle to fit them in. This may lead to some sides looking to play their Emerging Players against some of the weaker or out of form teams. 

Emerging Players – CPL 2020

Barbados Tridents: Nyeem Young (19 years old) & Joshua Bishop (20)

Guyana Amazon Warriors: Ashmead Nedd (19) & Kevin Sinclair (20)

Jamaica Tallawahs: Nicholas Kirton (22)

St Kitts & Nevis Patriots: Joshua Da Silva (22) & Dominic Drakes (22)

St Lucia Zouks: Kimani Melius (19) & Leniko Boucher (22)

Trinbago Knight Riders: Jayden Seales (19) & Amir Jangoo (23)

The Jamaica Tallawahs only have one Emerging Player after Jeavor Royal was exposed to Covid-19 and forced to withdraw. 

Freddie Wilde is a CricViz analyst. @fwildecricket