The Leeward Islands Hurricanes will have the first pick in the 2021/2022 West Indies Professional Cricketers Draft for the 2021/2022 cricket season that will be held virtually on Tuesday, May 25.

The Territorial Board franchises will convene to draft the final two players for their squads to play in the forthcoming season, which will hopefully include the CG Insurance Super50 Cup and the West Indies Championship. They will be selecting from a pool of nearly 100 players.

Each franchise’s pick position will be the inverse of their standing in the last West Indies Championship, held in 2019-20, and won by the Barbados Pride. The Leewards were at the bottom of the standing and hence were awarded the first pick.

It follows then that the Windward Islands Volcanoes will have the second pick, while the Jamaica Scorpions, Guyana Jaguars, Trinidad and Tobago Red Force will have the third, fourth, fifth picks, respectively. Champions Barbados will pick last.

The draft will be conducted over two rounds, where each franchise must pick a player in each round. Each franchise will pick two players to add to their pre-selected squad of 13 protected players, to make a full squad of 15 players. The franchises will be selecting their two picks from a pool of nearly 100 players.

Each franchise will have 90 seconds in each round to make a pick. Where a selection is not made within this time period, the franchise will miss their turn and will have to wait until all the other franchises have made their selection in that round, before making its selection.

Once the franchises have made their full picks to confirm their fifteen retained players, a total of 90 cricketers across the six franchises will be retained on full-time regional contracts for the next twelve months.

“The draft, now in its eighth year, demonstrates that CWI remains committed to our professional cricket structure and system, even in these times of uncertainty from the COVID-19 pandemic,” said CWI’s Cricket Operations Manager, Roland Holder.

“The ninety 90 regional players who will be awarded regional franchise contracts, will be able to train and practice professionally as CWI hopes for a return to normalcy in regional cricket later this year.”

Each choice by each franchise selection committee will be monitored and recorded by the draft overseer (s), as notified to the franchises by CWI.