West Indies captain Kieron Pollard is set to be announced as the first pick in the draft for the second season of the men’s Hundred.
On Tuesday, the ECB will announce the identities of players picked in the draft, which took place behind closed doors on Monday.
London Spirit, who finished eighth last year, had the first of the 42 picks, and opted to go for the powerful Trinidadian all-rounder.
The ECB confirmed on Monday that, as reported by Standard Sport last week, Trevor Bayliss will be taking over as Interim Head Coach after the death of Shane Warne, who was in charge last year.
Already in the Spirit squad are Eoin Morgan, captain when Bayliss coached England to their first World Cup win in 2019, Australia’s Glenn Maxwell, Mark Wood, and young English talent Zak Crawley, Mason Crane and Dan Lawrence.
Pollard, who is currently playing for Mumbai Indians in the IPL, has been drafted in one of Spirit’s two vacant £125,000 slots. They also had both £75,000 slots available and both £50,000.
Because of questions of overseas player availability – many national teams are playing inn the August time slot of the Hundred – each team is allowed to pick up four international players for their squad. Three of these positions will be finalised tomorrow, with the fourth at a “wildcard” draft held just before the tournament.
West Indies have white-ball internationals against India and New Zealand this summer, with the picture further complicated by the Caribbean Premier League, which also takes place at that time of year.
Pollard is one of a number of West Indies players with high reserve prices for the draft, including Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, Evin Lewis, Dwayne Bravo, Chris Gayle and Nicholas Pooran. Not all of them are as central to the national team as skipper Pollard, however.
