West Indies women’s, men’s A tours postponed
Cricket West Indies and Cricket South Africa have decided to postpone the women’s ODI series that was scheduled between the two nations in the end of this month in Jamaica and Trinidad. The five-match ODI series was to take place before the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup Qualifier in July. However, ICC announced the postponement of the qualifying tournament amid concern about the COVID-19 pandemic. South Africa have already qualified for the ICC Women’s World Cup 2021, having finished third in the ICC Women’s Championship. West Indies women are seventh on the IWC table. The top three teams from the Qualifier will go through to play in the 2021 World Cup, scheduled in February-March in New Zealand. The uncertainty due to the global health crisis has also forced CWI and CSA to cancel the men’s A team tour, scheduled to commence in Antigua in June. The priority throughout this difficult period is to protect the well-being of players, coaches, officials, fans and the whole cricket community and take a safety-first approach to all operations and decision making over the coming months.
CWI’s CEO Johnny Grave: The health and safety of the players and coaching staff is of paramount importance to both CWI and CSA and with the current COVID-19 travel restrictions it is impossible for us to consider both tours taking place as we had originally planned. We are continuing our discussions with CSA on the feasibility of hosting the men’s tour later this summer and will have further discussions in due course on new dates for the women’s and ‘A’ team tours. It is a frustrating state of affairs in which cricket finds itself around the world but there are more important issues that have to be confronted and the well-being of our players and support staff must always come first,” agreed CSA’s acting CEO Dr Jacques Faul. “Both our men’s and women’s national teams are keen to get back on the playing field as soon as possible. They want to build on their recent good results with the men achieving a 3-0 victory over Australia in their recent Momentum ODI series against Australia and our Momentum Proteas women coming so close to reaching the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup final.
Few days ago, The International Cricket Council (ICC) has postponed two qualifying events due to the COVID-19 pandemic on Tuesday (May 12). The Qualifier was due to take place in Sri Lanka between 3 and 19 July. The Europe qualifier which marks the start of the qualification pathway to the ICC U19 Cricket World Cup 2022 has also been postponed. The International Cricket Council (ICC) has announced the postponement of two further qualifying events due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup Qualifier and the ICC U19 Cricket World Cup Qualifier Europe Division 2.
