Kensington Oval to host two matches at same time

Mar 07, 2017 Sports

WI/Pak t20 to be played during the Guyana/B’dos clash

By Sean Devers
According to the fixtures send out by the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) two more t20 Internationals have been added to the Pakistan series and with the opening game scheduled for March 26, the penultimate day of

The Kensington Oval in Barbados will host a T20 International in ‘the middle’ of Guyana’s First-Class game there.

the Guyana Jaguars and Barbados Pride game at the Kensington Oval in Barbados.
If the setting of the Pakistan/West Indies T20 game at the same time that a Regional First-Class match is being played at the same venue was not confusing enough, a subsequent WICB release, issued Monday, was even more confusing and could set a serious precedent for future fixtures.
The WICB disclosed that instead of the Jaguars starting their eight-round match against Barbados Pride on March 24 the game would start a day earlier but here is the tricky part.
“The two sides will contest the first three days from Thursday, March 23 to Saturday, March 25, before taking a rest day on Sunday, March 26, to accommodate the first Twenty20 International between West Indies and Pakistan at the same venue, and returning to conclude the match on Monday, March 27,” the WICB said.
This should be a concern for the Guyana Management team and Skipper Leon Johnson since the condition of the match pitch could be changed for the last day by the running on it by the players in the t20 game.
Guyana ended the first half of the season second behind Jamaica and Johnson would want his team to become the first ever Guyanese to win three consecutive titles.
In addition, the ICC clearly stipulates that unless due to natural causes, the pitch cannot be re-prepared during the course of a match and even if this was allowed it could alter the result of the game on a last game track which has been ‘doctored’ making the toss unimportant.
Never before in the West Indies has there been a rest day in a four-day contest and even in the days of Test Matches with a rest day no other match was played on the ground on the rest day.
Solving this unnecessary problem could have been easily been sorted by shifting the First-Class match to one of the other grounds in Barbados.
But then again the WICB has mandated that all First-Class games only be played at the International venues thus robbing the fans at the rural venues like Albion in Guyana from seeing the Region’s top players in action, while very few go to the Stadiums to watch four-day cricket.
The Guyana/ Leewards Hurricanes ninth round four-day encounter has been rescheduled to be played from April 21-24 due to Guyana’s hosting of the three-match ODI series between Pakistan on April 7, 9 & 11 at Providence.

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News