Cricket España are pleased to announce that they will host Jersey in a bilateral series at La Manga next month.

April the 13th and 14th will see the Islanders head to the Spanish mainland for two T20I ranking matches on the Sunday. The day before the teams will play a development game to prepare for the main event.

On the confirmation of the series the Cricket España CEO John Howden commented "Spain are delighted to sanction this series and have the opportunity to play against one of the top associate teams in Europe. Thanks to Neil Macrae for help in setting up this series, before starting his position with the Dutch Women's National team, and my counterpart in Jersey Sarah Gomersall for working dilligently on the adminstration side to ensure the event goes ahead".

Spain will have the majority of their players to call upon and coach Corey Rutgers has named a 15 man squad that includes three T20I debutants. Two of them are UK based and have Spanish passports because of parental ties with Spain. Sebastian Hughes-Pinar and Alec Davidson-Soler have some T10 experience with the national team but have never played in the T20 format at international level. The third debutant is the everygreen Muhammad Babar. The T10 specialist is well known for his exploits in the shorter format of the game and is given the chance after excelling in the recent ECS event in Barcelona. His performances there went viral on social media after he hit two consecutive one handed sixes.

The rest of the squad has a familiar look to it. Alastair Priddle will be the strength and conditioning coach whilst on the playing front Christian Munoz-Mills proved his fitness and appetite for the game had not subsided after a long term injury and will once again captain the side after some solid performances at Montjuic. Yasir Ali will revert to Vice Captain and his Cataluyna based team mates Mohammad Atif, and Adeel Raja will spearhead the bowling attack. The experienced Atif Mehmood is also likely to have his full complement of overs in both matches. The silky quality batting skills of Mohammad Yasin could be pivotal if Spain are to have a successful series and the spinning prowess of both Charlie Rumisterwicz and Lorne Burns give Coach Rutgers an inviting option to his pace attack. Ravi Panchal adds an extra dimenson to the field and is always capable of scoring runs with the bat.

Three of the team are part of the Weston Shield which takes place in Portugal the week before. Daniel Doyle Calle, Muhammad Ihsan and Hamza Dar will be in the mainland Europe squad and will face the British and Irish Kinghts that have the Jersey duo Jonty Jenner and Julius Sumerauer in their line up.

Charles "Chuggy" Perchard will skipper the visitors and he stated "we are looking forward to playing competitive cricket again after the winter break and this series against Spain will be a good way to start our preparation for the ICC T20 tournament later this year"

Jersey currently are ranked 24th in the ICC rankings and Spain lie 10 places below in 34th.

Both teams will use this as a curtain raiser for their T20 campaign. Jersey will head to Germany in the European qualifiers whilst Spain go to Jerseys neighbouring island of Guernsey in their quest to secure the single spot that is available in each group to progress further in the competition.

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