West Indies head coach Augustine Logie has expressed sadness over the postponement of South Africa’s tour to the Caribbean and the subsequent World Cup Qualifiers in Sri Lanka due to Coronavirus pandemic. While the five-match ODI series against the Proteas was scheduled later this month, the Qualifiers were slated to start at the end of June.
“It’s unfortunate as far as the tour of Sri Lanka is concerned. Many players would have been hoping to do well in the annual regional tournament to stake a claim for the Sri Lanka tour, but it didn’t materialise COVID-19,” Logie said. “We are hoping and trusting that we will get the clearance to soon start playing cricket again.”
Amidst all the negativity in terms of finances surrounding West Indies cricket recently, there was some good news coming to hand on Tuesday as the board is processing payments for International matches that were due to players.
This was confirmed by chief executive officer (CEO) of Cricket West Indies (CWI) Johnny Grave who said: "It has been difficult and the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic situation has not made it any better but we are taking steps in the right direction when it comes to the finances. We are at the moment processing payments for our women and men international players.
"The women cricketers will be getting their payments over the next couple days for the Twenty20 (T20) World Cup, while the men will be getting their fees for the Ireland and Sri Lankan tour. This will mean that we are up to date with payments for our international cricketers.
"If the tour of England comes through, we want to ensure that we send our players there all being paid up and this is what we have done."
Former President of the Cricket West Indies (CWI) Dave Cameron has threatened to sue the board if he is not given a fair chance to respond to Pannell Kerr Foster (PKF) audit report before it is being published.
Cameron through his lawyer Loy L. A. Weste has written to the Chief Executive Officer of CWI, Mr. Jonathan Grave questioning the credibility of the report. Cameron has demanded, without prejudice to any rights he may now have a full copy of this report within 48 hours, and the right to respond fully to all of the questions, comments or allegations made by PKF, and statements made by Mr. Michael Holding on SportsMax and the President within 21 days. The letter stated that, “Should CWI whether by way of the Board or management or otherwise seek in the meantime to publish the report, or refuse to meet Cameron’s demands for a copy of the report and time to respond, he will have no alternative but to seek the appropriate orders and remedies from the High Court.”
West Indies spinner Rahkeem Cornwall has vowed to 'stick to what he knows', despite being the subject of recent criticism from legendary spinner Lance Gibbs.
The 85-year-old Gibbs, undisputedly one of the region’s finest ever craftsmen in the disciple of spin bowling, was critical of the performance of the current crop of regional spinners on a whole. His issue with Cornwall stemmed from what he described as the spinner’s short run-up and ‘lack of rhythm’.
Cornwall, who has insisted he only just heard of the remarks has insisted he is not fazed by the criticism as it was impossible to make everyone happy.
“I am not really on social media that much to see some of those things [comments] and if one or two people don’t say something to me I may not see it but I just don’t really dig too deep into it,” Cornwall told the Good Morning Jojo Radio Show.
Sweat can be used to shine the ball. Saliva cannot. Home umpires will temporarily replace neutral umpires. Every team will get an additional review per innings no matter the format. And there will be no Covid substitutes. These are the key recommendations made by the ICC cricket committee on Monday as cricket takes another step towards returning amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Anil Kumble, the head of the cricket committee, said the above recommendations were "interim measures" for safe resumption of play. "We are living through extraordinary times and the recommendations the committee have made today are interim measures to enable us to safely resume cricket in a way that preserves the essence of our game whilst protecting everyone involved."
These recommendations will now be sent to the ICC board, which is scheduled to meet on May 28 through video conference, and are likely to be ratified.
