England and Australia visits to the Caribbean this year will see them play five Test matches, in two series but fans in T&T would not be able to see any of them at the Queen's Park Oval, due to a technicality and poor communication.
Back in the day, when major Test playing nations came to the Caribbean, Port-of-Spain was always a venue on the fixture, now, with so many world class facilities built around the region, as a legacy to the ICC 2007 World Cup, a bid process is now in place.
The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) has asked that the bids come from respective governments in the region and not from their territorial cricket boards. As a result they did not entertain communication from the T&T Cricket Board (TTCB) and as a result there would be no Test match at the Queen's Park Oval.
CEO of the T&T Cricket Board (TTCB), Suruj Ragoonath explained that the board had gotten a pledge from the government through the then minister of national security Gary Griffith, that they were willing to invest US$250,000 to stage the second match in the Australian series at the Queen's Park Oval.
Speaking to the T&T Guardian Ragoonath said: "The WICB sent a document to the TTCB to get the T&T Government to bid to host the second Test between West Indies and Australia. The bid, which was guaranteed by the government, was sent to the WICB via the TTCB. The WICB later indicated that Jamaica would instead be the host as the bid was not sent directly by the T&T Government. By the time we got this information from the WICB it was too late to do anything further as Jamaica was already announced as the host."
Jamaica will host the second match, while the first game of the series will take place in Dominica. The England series, which preceeds the Australian battle, will take place in Antigua, Grenada and Barbados.
President of the TTCB, Azim Bassarath said that no bids went in for the England series. "The government did not send in any bids for the England series, so we decided to engage them to get a match for the Australian series, which was the bigger series.
"They got involved but in the end the time factor was not in our favour to get the Government to re-send their bid. I, however, want to thank them for their interest and hope to work closely with new Minister of Sport, Brent Sancho, in order to secure future matches in a timely manner."