New CPL CEO Pete Russell bats for women’s cricket, eyes 2022

NEW Caribbean Premier League (CPL) CEO Pete Russell wants to expand the CPL brand and focus on developing the women’s game in the region.

Russell, who was appointed CEO weeks ago, has shown interest in supporting women’s cricket in the past. During the 2019 CPL, when Russell was the league’s chief operating officer, two women’s T10 exhibition matches were held in Trinidad.

In a recent interview with Newsday, Russell said, “The other thing that I am very keen to do is to extend the CPL brand outside of just the six weeks that we play. Look at other opportunities whether that be shorter forms of the game, women’s cricket or Esports…or even the teams playing outside of the Caribbean. I just want to make the brand more accessible over a longer period of time.”

Speaking more about women’s cricket in the CPL, Russell said, “That’s the one that I think we’ve got a real opportunity to build a great platform for the women because even the two games that we saw in Trinidad (in 2019) it was great to see…I know that is something that the president of Cricket West Indies (Ricky Skerritt) really wants to explore.

“I would not be surprised if something happens as early as 2022 assuming the pandemic is somewhat behind us.”

The 2021 CPL runs from August 26-September 15 with the entire tournament being contested at Warner Park, St Kitts. Only vaccinated people will be allowed to attend matches at 50 per cent capacity because of covid19.

It is the first time in the nine-year history of the tournament that all the matches will be played at one venue. In 2020, the entire tournament was played in Trinidad because of covid19 but the Queen’s Park Oval and Brian Lara Cricket Academy were used.

Russell is optimistic Warner Park will cope with the 33 matches in the 2021 edition.

“It is always a risk because you are playing a lot of games as you say in one place, but we’ve had our pitch expert Dave Agnew who prepares wickets all around the world. He has been activated since the beginning of January working on a project to make sure that the wicket is prepared…we are as confident as we can be and we have done as much as we can do to ensure that the wickets will be absolutely first class.”

Speaking about the CPL returning to capacity crowds in the future, Russell said, “I am so eager, I can’t wait. It’s incredibly challenging to play the amount of games in one country without fans. Not having fans for any sort of professional sport is a struggle. We will have some fans there which will be great, but we need to get back to doing what we do best which is play our matches in front fans in Trinidad, Guyana, Barbados, Jamaica (and) St Lucia. Our hope is now for 2022, we hoped it would be this year but it is not.”