Barbados Today

Cricket West Indies (CWI) CEO Johnny Grave is hopefully of luring top talent Jofra Archer back to regional cricket with the prospect of an appearance at the ICC World Cup.

Despite being born in Barbados and moving to England when he was 18, Archer has declared his intent to represent England.  Due to the fact that the player did not live in England until after his 18th birthday means that he must complete a seven-year residency period.

Archer would, therefore, be ineligible to represent the country until the winter of 2022, which would see the player miss out on playing both the 2019 World Cup and T20 World Cup.  Graves hopes the prospect of playing international cricket sooner rather than later could be used as a drawing card to attract the former Windies U-19 player.

“As a cricketer, you always want to play at the highest level and, for the moment at least, the highest level by a considerable distance is international cricket,” Graves said.

“In which case, you would hope that he says, ‘I’ve done it against domestic competition and now I want to test myself at international level.

“From our point of view we need to give him another option and the first part of that is for us to qualify for the World Cup.  Then Jofra’s only opportunity to play in the 2019 World Cup in England, will be with the West Indies. His only opportunity to play in the T20 World Cup in Australia in 2020 is with the West Indies, too,” Grave added.

“Ultimately, if we’re not in that 2019 tournament then we’re probably not doing all we can to convince him that his international future lies with the West Indies. Financially he’ll be far better off in the short to medium-term being a West Indies international. With the Caribbean Premier League, a West Indies white-ball retainer along with its match fees and insurance policy, along with the ability to go and play IPL as well as other leagues would dwarf his Sussex contract once he has paid back two months of it for playing in the IPL.”