Your Ultimate Guide To Barbados

Local Cricket Teams

If there was ever an island where the game of cricket still dominated, despite competition from some of the more glamourous games like basketball, polo and football, it would be Barbados. At primary school, there are cricket teams, at secondary school, and then for those persons who continue to love the game and are either not interested in or do not qualify to play professionally, there are cricket teams at varying levels in every parish.

Apart from the school-boy teams, the Barbados cricket teams are divided into several divisions: e.g. Division I, Division 2, Premier League and Intermediate. If one examines closely, most of the teams would have representation in several of the divisions. They would likely constitute different people of differing capabilities and so LIME for example has a team in more than 1 Division.

Some of the names of the teams include BDF (Barbados Defence Force), Banks (Breweries), St Catherine, Spartan. These are but a few. At the local level, most new entries come by form of introduction, where friends or former school mates invite persons to join their club as a member, with a view to playing of course. There is usually a membership fee, which would cover administrative costs for example, when notices for special , general or annual meetings need to be issued.

Playing cricket like any other game, is also about building camaraderie and therefore members do tend to try to practice outside of regular game time and socialize after games and on other occasions. Those teams and team members who continue to be serious about their game recognize the value in this.

Listed below are cricket teams in two of the Divisions.

Division 1: Spartan, UWI, St Catherine, Empire, Maple, YMPC, Pickwick, Banks, Lime, Wanderers, Barbados Youth

Upper Intermediate: Central, Bristol, Alexandra Youth, Yorkshire, St John Cultural

At the highest level of cricket on the island is the Barbados National Cricket Team. It is representative of the cream of the crop of local talent who would be selected to represent Barbados at the various regional games such as the Shell Shield and the (West Indies Cricket Board) WICB Cup. The selection of representatives to represent the West Indies team, invariably comes out of a review and assessment of members of the national teams on each island subject to recommendation and ratification of a board of selectors.

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