The National Baseball Commission (CNB) reported this Monday that starting next October 8, the first edition of the Elite League of Baseball will take place. Cuban Baseball with the participation of six teams, official media on the island report.
A press release released by the entity and quoted through the website Hitrealizes that the qualifying phase of the nascent tournament will be held until December 11 of this year, the semifinals will be from December 17 to 27, and the final from January 7 to 17, 2023.
The text points out that the participating teams will have a list of 32 players and 13 members of the management group, and each team will play a total of 50 games, 10 against each rival. The system of the contest dictates that the first four places will qualify for the crossed semifinals, which will be seven games to win four, as well as the final between the two winners in that instance, the publication specifies.
Report details of the I Elite League of #Cuban Baseball
It will start on October 8, 2022 and end in January 2023. #Cuba #baseball #61SNB https://t.co/tkeLCou4sV pic.twitter.com/RCFmaqCJGR— JIT Cuban Sport (@jit_digital) June 27, 2022
The information issued by the CNB explains that after submitting to a popular vote and the criteria of the press and managers at all levels, it was defined that the teams will be made up of geographical areas.
One of the casts will be made up of players from the western provinces of Pinar del Río, Artemisa and the special municipality of Isla de la Juventud, another will be made up of players from the Industrial and Mayabeque teams, and a third will be based on members from Matanzas, Cienfuegos and Villa Clara.
Meanwhile, the three remaining teams will represent the eastern zone. One will come out of the merger of baseball players from Sancti Spíritus, Ciego de Ávila and Camagüey, the players from Las Tunas and Granma will be grouped in another team, and the last one will be made up of representatives from Holguín, Santiago de Cuba and Guantánamo.
The CNB established the formula for the integration of technical groups based on the results of each province in the National Seriesand the definition of the names of each team will be decided through a popular vote, enabled for 15 days on the website www.beisbolcubano.cu and on the mobile application The ball.
Although no further details are offered in the report, due to the characteristics and completion dates of the new tournament, everything indicates that its champion could be the Cuban representative for possible incursions into the Caribbean series.
The Elite League, according to the CNB, is a “key event” within the new development strategy of Cuban baseball and ends with an absence of almost three decades of a tournament that brings together the best players who play on the island. as the popular Selective Series did before.
Concentrating quality and thereby raising the level of the players who still play in the country, is the purpose of the island’s baseball authorities, highly questioned by fans due to the lack of good results in international tournaments in recent years. .
The Cuban team recently qualified for the next World Cup in the U-23 category, but gave in in the final of the continental tournament against the Mexican hosts. A few days earlier, the sub-15 category team had won the bronze medals at the Pan American Championship held in Venezuela, after the unauthorized use of a launcher in the semifinals, he prevented advancement to the defining duel.
