Cricket West Indies consider hosting South Africa before IPL

Cricket West Indies (CWI) are considering hosting atleast a part of South Africa’s originally scheduled tour to the Caribbean for 2 Tests and 5 T20Is early in September, before the commencement of the IPL. The tour was originally scheduled for July-August, but had to be postponed, much like most of the other tours and tournaments, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cricket West Indies chief executive Johnny Grave said on the Mason and Guests Cricket show, “We hope that South Africa will be able to come here in September for either a T20-only tour or a Test-only tour at the very least. It will be dependent on the IPL. South Africa have a number of their Test players who have IPL contracts, whereas in this current Test team we don’t have any IPL players.”

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With the Indian Premier League slated to begin on the 19th of September, Cricket West Indies will have a tedious task ahead of them in scheduling the matches against South Africa, given that they will also coincide with the Caribbean Premier League, which will begin on the 18th of August and end on the 10th of September.

Grave further said, “We won’t be able to play Test cricket against South Africa during the IPL, Cricket South Africa have made that very clear to us. They’ve got a commitment to their players to allow them to go and play in the IPL. The plan as we are working on now is that the players would come home, they will have the weekend at home. Those that are in the Caribbean Premier League will head down to Trinidad on probably August 3 so it’s a quick turnaround. CPL finishes on September 10. We hope very much that South Africa will follow immediately after that. Whether we can get the full tour in or we’re going to have to look at a split tour between the Tests and the T20s, we don’t know.”