CPL breaks new ground: Arnos Vale to host matches as league expands to eight nations

KINGSTOWN, St Vin­cent – The Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) is set to make his­to­ry this sum­mer, an­nounc­ing a land­mark ex­pan­sion that will see match­es played in a record-equalling eight na­tions, in­clud­ing a first-ever fix­ture at Arnos Vale in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

The tour­na­ment, which has con­firmed an Au­gust 7 start date, will run un­til Sep­tem­ber 20.

For the first time, crick­et fans in St Vin­cent will wit­ness CPL ac­tion at Arnos Vale, a venue steeped in Caribbean crick­et his­to­ry.

The ground has pre­vi­ous­ly host­ed 36 men’s in­ter­na­tion­als, in­clud­ing five match­es dur­ing the 2024 T20 World Cup, where spin bowl­ing fa­mous­ly dom­i­nat­ed pro­ceed­ings.

The CPL’s foot­print now spans An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Bar­ba­dos, Guyana, Ja­maica, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and To­ba­go.

As part of the ex­pan­sion, the league in­tro­duced a sev­enth fran­chise this year with the Ja­maica Kings­men. Their ad­di­tion ex­pands the ros­ter of teams, with five dif­fer­ent sides set to com­pete in the three con­firmed fix­tures at Arnos Vale.

While the CPL has yet to re­lease a full fix­ture list, the league con­firmed that all play­off dra­ma, in­clud­ing the elim­i­na­tor, two qual­i­fiers, and the cham­pi­onship fi­nal, will be staged at the his­toric Kens­ing­ton Oval in Bar­ba­dos from Sep­tem­ber 16 to 20.

How­ev­er, the CPL’s sched­ule clash­es sig­nif­i­cant­ly with Eng­land’s men’s Hun­dred com­pe­ti­tion. The over­lap will di­rect­ly im­pact the avail­abil­i­ty of two of the Caribbean’s biggest white-ball stars, Nicholas Pooran and Sher­fane Ruther­ford, who are ex­pect­ed to miss the fi­nal stages of MI Lon­don’s sea­son.

Fans across the re­gion will be ea­ger­ly await­ing the full sched­ule re­lease, with the promise of a tru­ly pan-Caribbean cel­e­bra­tion of T20 crick­et.

CMC