Caribbean Premier League Celebrates Record Numbers As Cricket Fans Worldwide Tune In To Get Their T20 Fix During Pandemic

There have been some unlikely sports winners during the COVID-19 pandemic. In March, when everything was canceled, we all became experts on football in Belarus, as they kept on playing when everything else stopped. In April, it was baseball in Taiwan and in May, rugby league in Australia took center stage as sports fans the world over had to diversify their interests. 

While many competitions have returned to play, cricket was one that struggled to get a product on the field. England played the West Indies and Pakistan in a series of Test Matches in bio-secure bubbles in Manchester and Southampton, but for the commercially vital shorter form of the game, it’s been a real struggle. The season was oriented around the T20 World Cup, initially due to be played in late 2020 in Australia but now postponed for a year. The Indian Premier League (IPL), the sport’s biggest cash cow, was knocked back from March until late September and shifted from India to the UAE. Into the breach has stepped the Caribbean Premier League (CPL), and they have been rewarded handsomely for their troubles.

Perhaps it took the pandemic to shake things up: last year, the CPL was shunted around the schedule because of West Indies’s international commitments, while in the years preceding, it clashed with the bulk of the English cricket summer in August. Now, all eyes are on the Caribbean. 

The league has put itself in a superb position to take advantage: games are live-streamed on both Youtube and Facebook, as well as being carried on traditional broadcasters in the UK, Australia, India, South Africa and the United States. They partnered with Sunset+Vine, one of the leading sports content production firms and splashed out on internationally recognized voices for the commentary in anticipation of increased interest. Games have even been moved forward to morning start times locally in order to reach primetime hours in India—with no crowds allowed in the stadiums, the organizers were free to experiment. 

Often, the CPL has been something of an afterthought on the global T20 circuit. While the West Indies produces some of the finest exponents of the shortest form of the game, their domestic comp has often failed to catch the imagination of the cricket world: it lacks the glamor and riches of the IPL, often clashes with England’s T20 Blast and takes place in the worst possible time zone for key audiences in the Indian subcontinent and Pacific regions. This year, however, has been a revelation. TV ratings have hit record highs, with the CPL outperforming the England v Pakistan test series in the sport’s largest single market of India.

It’s easy to see why: the West Indies are the reigning world T20 champions and their depth in the twenty-over format is insane. West Indians are often the foreign players drafted into add spark to rosters in leagues around the world, and with only 4 non-local players allowed, the CPL prioritizes its own talent above imports. Even the players that don’t make the national team—the Caribbean islands compete as the West Indies, rather than individual nations—would make most other countries first XI. Players from the national team can take plenty of the credit for making the league a success despite the pandemic: those who featured in the test series in England were in a bio-secure bubble from early June until late July, before returning home and almost immediately going back into another bubble to play in the CPL. 

Economically, the Caribbean is among the weakest of all the cricket nations and has often struggled to pay players enough to keep them in the game while not playing internationally, but the proliferation of T20 leagues has allowed those outside of the West Indies setup to earn year-round income from cricket and thus be available come CPL time. 

Now, the chance to capitalize has arrived and it is over to the players to keep it up. If Nicholas Pooran’s 100 not out last night for the Guyana Amazon Warriors is anything to go by, they seem to be hitting out of the park.