For a num­ber of rea­sons, the his­toric, in­au­gur­al Re­gion­al Women's Twen­ty20 Tour­na­ment to be staged next month in Ja­maica is ex­pect­ed to be keen­ly con­test­ed. The eight-team tour­na­ment will be staged at three venues in and around the Ja­maica cap­i­tal of Kingston-Kens­ing­ton Park, Ched­win Park and Sabi­na Park-from Au­gust 8 to Au­gust 18.

Josi­na Luke, the WICB's project of­fi­cer for women's crick­et, said the re­gion­al gov­ern­ing body was de­light­ed to be stag­ing the tour­na­ment at this time. "The West In­dies Women's team will be go­ing off to Eng­land for five T20 match­es in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber and this will be fol­lowed by the ICC Women's World T20 in Sri Lan­ka," she said.

"So this tour­na­ment is time­ly and will pro­vide our play­ers with valu­able match prac­tice. It should help to sharp­en their skills and help them bet­ter un­der­stand the ebbs and flows of this for­mat." She added: "It was for this rea­son that the di­rec­tors of the WICB had agreed with the pol­i­cy shift about the stag­ing of re­gion­al women's tour­na­ments to co­in­cide with the for­mat for the women's World tour­na­ment tak­ing place in that year. Luke said an­oth­er rea­son for the at­trac­tive­ness of the tour­na­ment was the suc­cess of the West In­dies Women's team over the last year. The Re­gion­al Women's Twen­ty20 Tour­na­ment will com­prise sev­en rounds of pre­lim­i­nary match­es lead­ing in­to a full slate of play­offs for po­si­tions from Cham­pi­ons to eighth place.

The par­tic­i­pat­ing teams are: Bar­ba­dos, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, Guyana, St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent & the Grenadines, T&T and hosts Ja­maica, the reign­ing Re­gion­al Women's Su­per50 cham­pi­ons. T&T will open against SVG on Au­gust 8 at Kens­ing­ton Park.