BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – Crick­et West In­dies di­rec­tor of crick­et, Jim­my Adams, says the re­gion­al gov­ern­ing body in­tends to do all in its pow­er to en­sure the first class cham­pi­onship is staged next year in spite of the on­go­ing COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The mar­quee cham­pi­onship has been one of the ca­su­al­ties of the pan­dem­ic, halt­ed af­ter eight rounds last year March and then scrapped this year, as the re­gion has con­tin­ued to bat­tle the fall­out from the virus.

While CWI host­ed sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al se­ries this year, the emer­gence of the lat­est Omi­cron strain of COVID-19 has once again raised spec­u­la­tion over lock­downs across the re­gion but Adams said the four-day tour­na­ment re­mained a “pri­or­i­ty”.

“Hav­ing not had first class crick­et in too long, we now have on pa­per a plan to roll out first class crick­et in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary and start­ing with that from a re­gion­al point of view, that is a pri­or­i­ty. That is some­thing that is top of our wish list for next year,” Adams said.

“We need to get our re­gion­al play­ers play­ing red ball crick­et so we’re go­ing to be watch­ing close­ly what’s hap­pen­ing and we’ll be do­ing every­thing we can to pro­tect those fix­tures.”

The vari­ant, de­tect­ed in south­ern Africa, forced the im­me­di­ate halt of the ICC Women’s World Cup Qual­i­fiers in Zim­bab­we, as the Unit­ed States, Unit­ed King­dom and sev­er­al Eu­ro­pean Union states slapped trav­el re­stric­tions on the re­gion.

West In­dies Women, who had played on­ly a sin­gle game, has since flown to the Gulf state of Oman but are yet to re­turn to the Caribbean.

Adams said CWI were mon­i­tor­ing the de­vel­op­ment of the new vari­ant but there was still a lot of in­for­ma­tion to be gath­ered go­ing for­ward.

“Is this new vari­ant some­thing we’re watch­ing very close­ly? One hun­dred per cent,” Adams ex­plained.

“To go in­to specifics will be very dif­fi­cult be­cause we still don’t have all the in­for­ma­tion ei­ther in terms of how well those play­ers who are vac­ci­nat­ed or any­body who is vac­ci­nat­ed will cope against it. There’s still a lot of in­for­ma­tion we don’t have.

“How­ev­er, we’re un­der no il­lu­sion that we need to get some four-day crick­et played as soon as pos­si­ble.”

The on­ly do­mes­tic cham­pi­onship to be staged since the on­set of the pan­dem­ic has been the Caribbean Pre­mier League, the re­gion’s pre­mier Twen­ty20 tour­na­ment.

Or­gan­is­ers host­ed the 2020 edi­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go and this year’s in St Kitts and Nevis.

In the ab­sence of the first class cham­pi­onship, se­lec­tors have rou­tine­ly brought the re­gion’s best red-ball play­ers to­geth­er in ‘Best vs Best’ four-day match­es in An­tigua, as a means of choos­ing in­ter­na­tion­al Test squads.

(CMC)