Red-ball cricket top priority for CWI; Adams assures Four-Day season to resume February 2022

By Akeem Greene

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Cricket West Indies (CWI) Director of Cricket, Jimmy Adams, has re-emphasised the need for more importance to be placed on red-ball cricket and assured that the Regional Four-Day Championship will resume in early February 2022.

In early October, Adams indicated CWI was eyeing a return of Regional First-Class cricket in late January or early February 2022 after close to a two-year hiatus, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Speaking at a recent press briefing, the Director assured the Championship will make a return in 2022.

“Red ball cricket is our number one priority going into the new year. The plans as they stand now is that we begin early February and play a minimum of five rounds of Four-Day cricket between February and April – May, so, it is a priority and we are looking to kick-off Regional cricket in early February,” the Director of Cricket explained.

The former West Indies batsman said the Championship also allows coaches to assess the progress of the remedial work.

He was speaking on the backdrop of a question posed about the reoccurring problems West Indies’ batsmen face and what remedial work they are doing between tours.

“It is very difficult out of the technical work that is done, let’s say you don’t have a regional series in which to physically see the player in competition then apart from knowing technical drills and drill work that is done, it is very difficult sometimes to measure outside of a competitive scenario exactly the level of progress that a player has made and that is something that has to be assessed when the team is assembled whether before a camp or Best v Best scenario.”

After the two-match Test series in August against Pakistan, CWI recently held two Three-Day warm-up matches in Antigua for this tour.

“The key issue is having people on the ground within the territories at the franchises, Head Coaches, Assistant coaches, who can both do work with the player as set out by the international coaching support staff.”

Apart from the CG Insurance Super50 Cup, which was played in a bubble earlier this year in Antigua, no other senior regional tournament, organised by CWI, has occurred since the abrupt end of the Regional Four-Day competition in March 2020.

Barbados Pride were declared the 2020 champion after eight rounds, ending Guyana Jaguars’ five-year stranglehold on the title.