The coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic has hit the West In­dies camp on the eve of their de­par­ture to Bangladesh with Guyanese fast-bowl­ing all-rounder Ro­mario Shep­herd ruled out and he was test­ed pos­i­tive. He was se­lect­ed as part of the One Day In­ter­na­tion­al (ODI) team. Bar­ba­di­an pac­er Keon Hard­ing, who is yet to make his West In­dies de­but, will re­place Shep­herd in the squad.

Shep­herd re­turned a pos­i­tive COVID-19 test in his Guyana home­town, ac­cord­ing to a Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) me­dia re­lease is­sued on Thurs­day.

In ac­cor­dance with the es­tab­lished gov­ern­ment stip­u­la­tions, Shep­herd will re­main in Guyana where he is un­der­go­ing a pe­ri­od of iso­la­tion. Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) start­ed the first of a se­ries of COVID-19 tests on all mem­bers of the Bangladesh tour­ing par­ty on Jan­u­ary 2 and fol­low­ing re­ceipt of the re­sults, the board con­firmed that all oth­er mem­bers of the tour­ing par­ty re­turned neg­a­tive re­sults. All mem­bers of the tour­ing par­ty took their sec­ond and fi­nal pre-trav­el COVID-19 test yes­ter­day.

This will be the West In­dies' fi­nal away tour oblig­a­tion un­der the ICC's Fu­ture Tours Pro­gramme. How­ev­er, a packed home sea­son which is on the hori­zon may present a lo­gis­ti­cal night­mare for CWI. Sri Lan­ka, South Africa, Pak­istan and Aus­tralia are ex­pect­ed to come to the Caribbean this year.

CWI Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) John­ny Grave has been in con­tact with the var­i­ous stake­hold­ers in­volved in this te­dious process. He told Guardian Me­dia Sports on Thurs­day, “We’ve been in talks again this morn­ing (yes­ter­day) with Sri Lan­ka try­ing to make sure that their tour can take place safe­ly in the Caribbean and we con­tin­ue to work very close­ly with Sri Lan­ka and the Min­istries of Health in the re­spec­tive coun­tries in which we ul­ti­mate­ly plan to host them but we have to ac­cept that we may need to put some last-minute con­tin­gen­cies in place if the sit­u­a­tion from a COVID-19 per­spec­tive changes.”

To date, Bangladesh, a pop­u­la­tion of 161 mil­lion peo­ple, has 519,000 cas­es with 7,687 deaths.

How­ev­er, with every Caribbean coun­try hav­ing dif­fer­ent COVID-19 rules, each tour may be lim­it­ed to one to two coun­tries as op­posed to be­ing spread out across the re­gion. Grave as­sured that the board still want­ed to hold to its ethos of be­ing eq­ui­table in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of crick­et around the re­gion.

Grave, the for­mer com­mer­cial di­rec­tor of the Pro­fes­sion­al Crick­eters' As­so­ci­a­tion in Eng­land ex­plained, “One of the ben­e­fits is we’ve got so much crick­et in the next 10 months that we’ve re­al­ly got the op­por­tu­ni­ty to still spread it out across those 10 in­ter­na­tion­al venues. The re­al­i­ty is, though, I think tours will in­volve less move­ment and, there­fore, less host coun­tries so we’re on­ly ex­pect­ing two host coun­tries for Sri Lan­ka and that will fol­low through the sum­mer.”

Grave, who has been in the job since 2017, al­so re­vealed that the West In­dies women’s team is gath­er­ing in An­tigua this week­end for their first high-per­for­mance train­ing camp un­der new head coach Court­ney Walsh. Guardian Me­dia Sports un­der­stands that among the play­ers are Kar­ish­ma Ramharack, Anisa Mo­hammed, left-arm-spin­ner Steffie Soogrim, Brit­ney Coop­er and Re­niece Boyce.

West In­dies ODI Squad

Ja­son Mo­hammed (cap­tain), Sunil Am­bris (vice-cap­tain), Nkrumah Bon­ner, Joshua Da Sil­va, Keon Hard­ing, Jah­mar Hamil­ton, Chemar Hold­er, Akeal Ho­sein

Alzarri Joseph, Kyle May­ers, An­dre Mc­Carthy, Kjorn Ot­t­ley, Rov­man Pow­ell, Ray­mon Reifer and Hay­den Walsh jr.

West In­dies Test Squad

Kraigg Brath­waite (cap­tain), Jer­maine Black­wood (vice-cap­tain), Nkrumah Bon­ner, John Camp­bell, Rah­keem Corn­wall, Joshua Da Sil­va, Shan­non Gabriel, Kavem Hodge, Alzarri Joseph, Kyle May­ers, Shayne Mose­ley, Veerasam­my Per­maul, Ke­mar Roach, Ray­mon Reifer and Jomel War­ri­can.

Full Tour Sched­ule

Jan­u­ary 10: West In­dies ar­rive

Jan­u­ary 18: One-day warm-up match, BKSP, Savar

Jan­u­ary 20 1st ODI, SB­NCS, Dha­ka

Jan­u­ary 22: 2nd ODI, SB­NCS, Dha­ka

Jan­u­ary 25: 3rd ODI, ZACS, Chat­togram

Jan­u­ary 28-31: Four-day warm-up, M.A. Az­iz Sta­di­um, Chat­togram

Feb­ru­ary 3-7: 1st Test Match, ZACS, Chat­togram

Feb­ru­ary 11-15: 2nd Test Match, SB­NCS, Dha­ka