The beleaguered St Lucia Zouks franchise of the Caribbean Premier League (CPL) was taken off life support, courtesy of a group of investors with extensive experience in high profile cricket. KPH Dream Cricket Private Limited, based in India, has knowledgeable owners who have a track record of success off and on the field in major events.
Details concerning the sale of the St Lucia Zouks, who have been part of the CPL since its inception in 2013, took place Monday morning at Sandals Grande. It was indeed a grand affair with a head table that included Prime Minister Allen Chastanet,; Minister of Tourism Dominic Fedee; Mohit Burman of KPH Dream Cricket Private Limited; and Chief Operating Officer of Hero CPL, Pete Russell.
Following the introduction of the head table by Mistress of Ceremonies Sue Monplaisir, Russell, who was the first speaker, expressed his delight with CPL being associated with a highly successful group like KPH, under its chairman, Burman. This is what Russell had to say about the gentleman: “He is an incredible person, really, in terms of the amount of investment he’s made in sport. He’s had multiple investments, I think in five different sports, all of them hugely successful, but cricket is his passion. Obviously you all know him through his chairmanship of the very successful Kings Eleven franchise in India [IPL]. If you think about his links in the Caribbean, he is always very quick to sign the best players that we have here. He is a huge fan of West Indies cricket and also is a huge partner for us because of what he brings in terms of his experience from IPL, which we all know is the biggest league in the world.”
While thanking the Prime Minister and Minister of Tourism for supporting CPL, Russell had a special message for Zouk fans: “You lived with us through the seven years and it has not been necessarily an easy relationship in terms of the ups and downs, but I think you will find, with the new ownership group you will have a really different experience. Obviously they are winners, so I would expect to see the Zouks go from strength to strength.”
Burman was brief and to the point: “It has been a pleasure being here. The last few days have been an eye opener. We learnt not only is cricket a passion here, so are other sports as well. We hope to be able to take the Zouks from strength to strength and look forward to all the support over the next few years and more to come.”
During his brief remarks, Prime Minister Chastanet looked to sweeten the pie just a little bit with the new investors. He briefly sidestepped the day’s agenda and instead focused more on international relations between India and Saint Lucia. He said: “I indicated to Mr Burman that Saint Lucia has made a very clear policy position, that we want to be able to strengthen our relationship with India. Actually we are in the process of looking to be able to open up a High Commission Office and have a stronger representation in India right now. We have seen several major Indian investments coming in, Mr Burman being one of them, as well as some of the offshore schools and universities that we have here.”
After a brief pause, Chastanet dealt with the topic of the day: “Back to cricket: CPL is a very important component to the development of our country. For those of us who don’t appreciate that, sometimes we just have to ask ourselves the question what it would be like if we didn’t have a CPL team. I hear a lot of people complaining sometimes about the results that we are having, but sometimes you have to maybe take the opposite of that to say, ‘Imagine if we weren’t, and everybody else in the Caribbean was, how would we feel?’ I think CPL has opened the door for other sports. We hope to see maybe football being the next one where we can establish a CPL-like league; we may not be in the big leagues but certainly in terms of semi-pro and creating an opportunity for our younger players to be able to develop.”
Minister Fedee started by praising the CPL group for “cementing the commercialization of cricket to the Caribbean”. He told the new investors: “Certainly the television coverage this is going to provide is a significant achievement and benefit to tourism and we are going to see millions of people in a lot of our key markets viewing Saint Lucia.”
He echoed the sentiments of the prime minister that we are seeing a good return on our investment from this initiative and will be supporting this for many, many years to come.
