CWI director hints four-day tournament could be cancelled

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On 24 March 2020, the regional governing body cancelled the final two rounds of fixtures, and named Barbados as the tournament winners after they finished top of the group
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By Neto Baptiste

President of the Leeward Islands Cricket Board (LICB) and a Cricket West Indies (CWI) Director, Enoch Lewis, believes that this year’s instalment of the Regional Four Day cricket competition is “unlikely”, given the challenges posed by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

The former Antigua and Barbuda and Leeward Islands batsman said that based on preliminary discussions, hosting the annual competition could prove a difficult task this year.

“There are challenges in terms of hosting that and they would have been in Barbados and Trinidad and I have a personal feeling that it is unlikely to happen because of the Covid situation and the challenges in managing all these teams in a bubble. It’s a really significant undertaking and I have to wait on CWI’s official announcement on it,” he said.

In March 2020, CWI suspended its four-day tournament, for a minimum of 30 days, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. On 24th March that same year, the regional governing body cancelled the final two rounds of fixtures, and named Barbados as the tournament winners, after they finished top of the group.

Lewis revealed also that scheduled LICB tournaments could also be cancelled but added that the body has moved to ensure that players would be able to play some cricket.

“In the event that the four-day tournament does not happen, our plan is to assemble about 28 to 30 players in St Kitts if there is no four-day tournament and we would use these practice matches because we are trying to get about three or four of them, as part of the bench mark for selecting our players for the next contract year so at this point we are looking to play some games,” the former player said.

The six teams slated to contest the Regional Four Day tournament are Guyana, Jamaica, the Leeward Islands, Trinidad & Tobago, the Windward Islands, and the defending champions, Barbados.

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