Browne-John impressed with inaugural Courts T20

The inaugural 2017 tournament, which concluded on Friday, featured KJ Sports Eastern Diamonds, Sacha Cosmetics Northern Starblazers, TECU Southern Titans and Central Gladiators. The Starblazers won the tournament with a seven- wicket win over the Titans in the final at the Brian Lara Academy in Tarouba.

Browne-John, who is also an executive member of the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board (TT CB), said the success of the tournament was a pleasant surprise as she was apprehensive leading up to the competition.

“I thought it was a very successful tournament,” she said in an interview yesterday. “When we had these thoughts of trying to hold a women’s T20 (tournament), we just had the thought.

We wondered if we could put on something like this, we wonder what will be the response, we wondered if it will be successful.

“We said ‘let us try it’,” she continued.

“It was just a trial and it surpassed our wildest expectations.

We never anticipated the enthusiasm from the players, the public, the media. When we had that media launch at the National Cricket Centre (in Couva) and I saw the number of media people there I was pleasantly surprised.” Each team were allowed to have two regional players on their team and Browne-John said their response was overwhelming.

“The response we got from the West Indies players, nearly everyone of them was interested in coming.

It is just two people said they could not make it. When I looked at the crowd there on Friday night at the final, I have never seen a large crowd of people for a women’s cricket game in Trinidad and Tobago like that before.” Browne-John said plans have already started for the next tournament and ways to improve the standard, both on and off the field.

“We have already started to discuss next year and going forward,” said the current WI women’s team manager. “We hope that next week we will be able to hold a post mortem and look at the positives that we had, and the things that could be improved.

“How could we bring it more on a line with a franchise tournament? How could we get the owners of the teams to be more involved? All the players who were here, the overseas players, everyone have said to us already ‘Please don’t leave us out for next year.

We know that other people will want to come next year, but please remember us’.” The former West Indies Women’s cricketer said a number of people are asking if more teams will compete in the next tournament, but Browne-John does not want the standard to fall. “We have already said from next year we need to bring in more regional players.

People have been asking me if we don’t think we should have more teams. We don’t want to increase the teams and lower the standard of the tournament.

We want to maintain a very high standard. What we will have to do is bring in more foreign players, lift the standard and probably just have more matches.” One round was played in the 2017 edition, with the top two teams advancing to the final.

Browne-John said hopefully in the future two rounds of matches will be played before the knockout phase, which will give each team the opportunity to play six matches instead of three in the preliminary round.