With the tournament due to start on Thursday, there are a number of news items of interest circulating. The tournament organizers have announced they are adding ten further Canadians to squads for the competition as part of “its commitment towards the growth of Canadian cricket”. They include Jimmy Hansra, Bavindhu Addihetty, Ravinderpal Singh, Bupinder Singh Sohal, Varun Sehdev, Navneet Dhaliwal, Armaan Kapoor, Arslan Khan, Dhanuka Pathirana and Faisal Jamkhandi.
Media release
ATN have announced that matches will be televised on their affiliate, CBN.
Media release
It appears that visa issues are impacting three players from the UAE- and may have spread to other players.
Story on the National, UAE
Bertus de Jong in his column on Associates cricket for Cricbuzz comments:-
“With the first game scheduled for June 28th, just three days away, it also seems Cricket Canada and league owners Mercuri Group will not find buyers for any of the franchises for this edition, nor a global broadcast deal, though the tournament will be broadcast on local channel ATN, and streamed online via CricInGif. In short, while it looks increasingly like Cricket Canada and the backers may yet pull off what is a remarkable feat of logistics and organisation, they will be doing so at an enormous expense – this season at least.”
Lastly it was noticeable that the Alberta team that won the Western T20 did not have any players from the Calgary league, in legal dispute with Cricket Alberta. One hopes that this dispute will not spill over into the Global T20 and impact the Calgary players drafted by the teams