St John's- Guyana's first two rounds of match­es in this year's WICB Re­gion­al 4-day tour­na­ment will no longer be played at the Guyana Na­tion­al Sta­di­um. A tele­phone con­fer­ence in­volv­ing the Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee of the West In­dies Crick­et Board on Sat­ur­day took a de­ci­sion to play both the first and sec­ond round match­es at Wind­sor Park in Do­mini­ca while the venue(s) for Guyana's third and fourth round match­es will be an­nounced at a lat­er date. Guyana face the prospect of miss­ing out on the tour­na­ment as con­fu­sion con­tin­ue to reign in the man­age­ment of the sport in the coun­try.

Both the Guyana Crick­et Board, the of­fi­cial­ly recog­nised body that has gov­erned the sport in the coun­try for more than six decades, and the Gov­ern­ment-ap­point­ed in­ter­im man­age­ment com­mit­tee, head­ed by West In­dies leg­end Clive Lloyd, last week an­nounced sep­a­rate 30-mem­ber train­ing squads to pre­pare for the tour­na­ment. A re­lease from the WICB yes­ter­day stat­ed that a po­si­tion on the host­ing of the third Dig­i­cel Test against Aus­tralia which was sched­uled for the Guyana Na­tion­al Sta­di­um will be made af­ter dis­cus­sions with oth­er stake­hold­ers. The WICB re­it­er­at­ed its po­si­tion that the Guyana Crick­et Board was the sole au­tho­rised gov­ern­ing body for crick­et in Guyana.

"The WICB re­states its full sup­port to the Gov­ern­ment of Guyana's In­ter­im Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee func­tion­ing as an ad­vi­so­ry body. The WICB will not rec­og­nize or ap­prove any en­ti­ty oth­er than the GCB as the au­tho­rised gov­ern­ing body for crick­et in Guyana," stat­ed the re­lease. Talks be­tween the Guyana Gov­ern­ment, the GCB and the WICB, me­di­at­ed by CARI­COM Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Ir­win Le Rocque, were held on Jan­u­ary 10 and a draft agree­ment doc­u­ment based on dis­cus­sions in the meet­ing was cir­cu­lat­ed to the par­ties. How­ev­er, the WICB said it deeply re­gret­ted the un­due de­lay by the Gov­ern­ment of Guyana to re­spond to Cari­com. (CMC)