THE West Indies Four-Day Championship, which was tentatively scheduled to bowl off this month, has been canceled because of the covid19 pandemic.
For months Cricket West Indies (CWI) has deliberated whether it was possible to have the annual tournament.
Now Sukesh Maniam, who was a TT Cricket Board shareholder representative, along with Kerwin John at the CWI annual general meeting on Sunday, has said the tournament has been canceled.
Maniam told Newsday, “The four-day tournament is definitely off, due to obvious reasons, of moving teams around with restricted flights in and out of countries especially like TT, then (you have) the quarantine periods and so on.”
“What they are proposing…is that each territory is going to have their own matches – their best versus the rest kind of thing, within their territory.”
The entire South Africa tour of the West Indies is tentatively scheduled to be played in Trinidad.
It will include two Test matches and five T20 matches.
It was initially reported that Trinidad would host matches when Pakistan visits the Caribbean later this year.
The option of playing South Africa in Trinidad was discussed at the Cricket West Indies (CWI) annual general meeting on Sunday.
CWI has tried to limit players' traveling during the covid19 pandemic.
Sri Lanka and West Indies faced off in three T20 Internationals, three One Day Internationals and two Test matches from early March to early April. All those matches were played in Antigua at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium and at the Coolidge Cricket Ground.
Though the opposition teams in their last four Test matches are lowly ranked, it can be argued that results by West Indies are encouraging from a statistical perspective.
Under the captaincy of opening batsman Kraigg Brathwaite, West Indies beat Bangladesh 2-0 away in February and battled 0-0 against Sri Lanka in the just-concluded series in the Caribbean, or to be more precise, in Antigua on flat pitches at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium.
It is the first instance since 2012-13 that West Indies have played three or more consecutive Tests without a defeat. As my old school cricket teammate, Trevor Eastmond, later to become a well-known comedian, would say, clap for that.
But this is no joke. The statistics tell us that West Indies have been struggling for a very long time to dominate teams.
Roger Harper, Cricket West Indies’ Chief Selector has expressed concern over the productivity of opening partnerships for the West Indies but laments the fact that no one is really knocking at the door to be selected.
Captain Kraigg Brathwaite has had a welcome return to form with two Test half-centuries and a century in his last four Test matches but fellow opener John Campbell has not been inspiring much confidence with his performances.
The Jamaican has scores of 3, 23, 36, 18, 42, 11, 5, and 10 in his last four Tests. His last half-century, 68, was made in the second Test against New Zealand in December last year.
As a result, solid opening partnerships for the Caribbean side have been rare and this is a worry for Harper.
“I think it has been a concern for a while. It was pleasing to see the captain get some big scores, but we need the partnership, on the whole, to be solid,” Harper said this past week on Mason and Guest.
Former West Indies batsman Ramnaresh Sarwan has been appointed to lead the senior selection panel of the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB). His appointment is one several made at a meeting of the newly elected board on Saturday night.
At the meeting, which was the second held since the March 29 elections, and chaired by President B Bissoondyal Singh, several sub-committees were established for senior selection, junior selection as well as for cricket development, finance and public relations.
