Carter looks set to play for Barbados

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – Jonathan Carter has all but confirmed that he will play for Barbados in the Caribbean Super50 Championship starting next week in Guyana.

Carter was set to play for Barbados in a limited-overs practice match – which was rained out – against Windward Islands on Wednesday at the Desmond Haynes Oval on the outskirts of the Barbados capital.

The 23-year-old Carter and fellow all-rounder Carlos Brathwaite, his cousin, had been embroiled in controversy, after both Barbados and Combined Campuses & Colleges selected them in their squads for the Championship.

Carter and Brathwaite were both given national retainer contracts when the Barbados Cricket Association became the first territorial board in the region to offer them to its players last year.

The contracts inexorably tie the players to the national team and the BCA rejected their requests for leave to play for the CCC.

“We had a meeting with officials of the University of the West Indies and based on that development we will issue a statement on the matter shortly,” BCA Chief Executive Officer Deighton Smith told the Daily Nation newspaper.

Brathwaite, now touring Bangladesh with West Indies for the first time ever, represented CCC in this year’s WICB Regional first-class championship, when he made his debut, after he turned out for Barbados in the Caribbean Twenty20 Championship last January.

Carter, who bats left-handed and bowls right-arm medium-pace, played for Barbados in last year’s Super50 in Jamaica. This year, he also played for the national team in the Caribbean T20 and the regional four-day tournaments, but has never represented CCC.

Last year, he switched clubs however, moving from relegation-threatened club Banks to University of West Indies, bidding for their third straight BCA Division 1 league title.