The Caribbean Premier League (CPL) is the premier T20 tournament of the Caribbean. The tournament was first held in 2013 by Cricket West Indies. It replaced the already existing Stanford 20/20 which was terminated due to lack of sponsorship.
Even though the CPL follows a routine double round-robin and knockout format, the fixtures are scheduled in a rather unusual manner. There are six teams in the competition, each of which plays ten matches. Three of these matches are home matches for each side. Each team plays five consecutive matches at one site and later the remainder of the five matches are played at another site. This is because all the teams are located at a single site (six home venues). The knockout stages are preceded by the playoffs just like one sees in the Indian Premier League (IPL). All these elimination games are played at The Queen’s Park Oval and the Brian Lara Stadium.
The six teams that are a part of the CPL are: Barbados Royals, Guyana Amazon Warriors, Jamaica Tallawahs, St Kitts and Nevis Patriots, St Lucia Kings and Trinbago Knight Riders. Another team called the Antigua Hawksbills was dissolved in 2014.
The trophy of the CPL is called the CPL Roots Trophy. The winning side is awarded a prize of $1 million. The Trinbago Knight Riders under the leadership of Dwayne Bravo is the most successful side in the history of the tournament. The franchise has won 4 titles in total. The teams of Barbados and Jamaica have won two titles each, and the St Kitts & Nevis Patriots has won one title.
