St John’s, Antigua — The Leeward Islands Cricket Association (LICA), during this year’s PCL draft to be held later this year, will be required to select at least two players from outside the sub-region while a third option will also be available to the struggling outfit.
Leeward Islands was gifted the selections following their dismal performances in the WICB Regional Super50 and 4-Day competitions where they finished at the bottom of the table in both.
President of LICA, Auckland Hector, welcomed the move by WICB to impose stricter rules for the draft.
“Only Trinidad picked anyone outside of their territory. The West Indies Cricket Board is going to be insisting that two players must be (selected) from outside of the territories as part of the draft selections. In the case of the Leeward Islands who are at the bottom of this year’s tournament, we would be allowed a minimum of three players outside of our territory, and we are going to have the first option of the draft,” he said.
Hector also denied reports by coach Ridley Jacobs that no instructions were given to the two-man selection team ahead of the draft.
“As far as I am aware, he did in fact, get a mandate from LICA as to the make-up of the individuals we were going to be looking for. We weren’t saying to them to pick ABCD, we were saying these were the conditions under which we would want the franchise team to be made up,” he said.
“In other words, at one point in time we said we wanted at least three players under the age of 19. We wanted a set number of batsman, wicketkeepers, bowlers and so forth. We are going to be broadening that this year,” Hector added.
The WICB had expressed dissatisfaction over how teams within the Caribbean handled the draft held in October of 2014 with only one team selecting an outsider.
The regional board has since moved to put measures in place to ensure a more competitive draft.