New owners, new team, new record
Three things changed for the third season. Antigua Hawksbills were wound up and replaced by St Kitts and Nevis Patriots, giving the league the six-team line-up it has kept ever since. The group stage became a proper double round robin of thirty matches. And the Knight Riders Group, which owns Kolkata Knight Riders in the Indian Premier League, bought a majority stake in Trinidad and Tobago Red Steel, the first of the ownership crossovers that now run through the competition.
The Red Steel won the title before the rebrand took effect, so the honour belongs in the records to Trinidad and Tobago Red Steel; from 2016 the same team played as Trinbago Knight Riders.
Bravo's season
Dwayne Bravo took 28 wickets in thirteen matches, a mark no bowler has matched in a season of the Caribbean Premier League, including a five-wicket haul and two four-wicket hauls, and was named player of the tournament. Chris Gayle made 430 runs for Jamaica Tallawahs, the most of any batter, including 105 in one innings and 90 from 36 balls in another.
Barbados Tridents topped the group with six wins from ten. Guyana Amazon Warriors and the Red Steel finished on five, with three sides on four behind them.
Three matches at the Queen's Park Oval
The knockout stage was played at the Red Steel's home ground and they won all three matches in it. In the first they made 152 for 6 and bowled Jamaica out for 125, Darren Bravo taking the award. In the second they held Guyana to 108 for 9 and chased it with nine balls left, Kamran Akmal taking the award.
In the final on 26 July they made 178 for 5 and Barbados could only reach 158 for 4 in reply, losing by twenty runs. Kamran Akmal took the match award again. It was the franchise's first title and, in various names, the first of five.
For Barbados Tridents, defending the title they had won in Grenada and Saint Kitts a year earlier, it was a first defeat in a final. Reported attendance across the season was 289,654, up again on the two seasons before it.