The re­turn of T&T women's crick­eters Anisa Mo­hammed, West In­dies women's vice-cap­tain, and trav­el­ling re­serve play­er Kar­ish­ma Ramharack, mem­bers of the re­gion­al team in Zim­bab­we at the now can­celled In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) Women's Crick­et World Cup Qual­i­fiers, are now en­gag­ing the at­ten­tion of the Min­istries of Sports and Health.

This ac­cord­ing to Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh at a COVID-19 me­dia con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day morn­ing, ad­dress­ing as­pects of his min­istry's re­lease which was sent out on Fri­day evening.

The re­lease ad­vised the pub­lic that, giv­en the emer­gence of the new COVID-19 Vari­ant of Con­cern - Omi­cron (B.1.1.529) COVID-19, the gov­ern­ment has im­posed trav­el re­stric­tions on trav­ellers from the fol­low­ing coun­tries, Botswana, Eswa­ti­ni (for­mer­ly Swazi­land), Lesotho, Malawi, Mozam­bique, Namib­ia, South Africa, and Zim­bab­we.

"The teams, the Trinida­di­ans re­turn­ing here, we will work with the re­spec­tive agen­cies, they are on na­tion­al du­ty, and we will see what arrange­ments can be made for them," said the Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh.

"The same thing will ap­ply to oth­er teams. They will work close­ly with the Min­istry of Sport and their gov­ern­ing bod­ies to see what arrange­ments they could make but un­der­stand, the Omi­cron pose, a new threat to T&T and to the world and we have to re­spond and bal­ance all of these things. It is al­ready en­gag­ing our at­ten­tion."

On Sat­ur­day, the ICC an­nounced that the women's qual­i­fy­ing tour­na­ment which was sched­uled to be played un­til De­cem­ber 5, was called off due to the emer­gence of the lat­est COVID-19 vari­ant in South Africa and the in­tro­duc­tion of trav­el re­stric­tions from a num­ber of African coun­tries, in­clud­ing the host coun­try, it has re­luc­tant­ly de­cid­ed to call off the event, with the qual­i­fi­ca­tion slots de­cid­ed as per team rank­ings, in keep­ing with the tour­na­ment’s play­ing con­di­tions.

Al­so, Zim­bab­we and South Africa are two na­tions that will be trav­el­ling to the Caribbean for the up­com­ing ICC Un­der-19 Men’s Crick­et World Cup, ear­ly next year.

Just Thurs­day, tour­na­ment di­rec­tor of the U-19 World Cup Fawwaz Baksh thanked the gov­ern­ments of T&T, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Guyana, and St Kitts and Nevis for sup­port­ing Crick­et West In­dies in host­ing its fourth glob­al tour­na­ment at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Queen’s Park Oval in St Clair, Port-of-Spain.

Then, Baksh ad­vised that all the of­fi­cials and coach­ing staff mem­bers must be vac­ci­nat­ed for COVID-19, say­ing: “We have a re­quire­ment at Crick­et West In­dies that every­one who is com­ing to this tour­na­ment be 100 per­cent vac­ci­nat­ed.”

How­ev­er, Baksh added that the rule will not ap­ply to the play­ers be­cause some of them will be Un­der-18 and the vac­cine is still un­avail­able in some coun­tries for chil­dren.

New Zealand with­drew from the com­pe­ti­tion due to the manda­to­ry quar­an­tine re­stric­tions for mi­nors that they would have faced on their re­turn jour­ney from the tour­na­ment and was re­placed by Scot­land.

The Scot­tish team joins West In­dies, Aus­tralia, and Sri Lan­ka in Group D. Bangladesh is the cur­rent de­fend­ing cham­pi­on and will come up against Eng­land, Cana­da, and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates in Group A. In­dia, Ire­land South Africa, and Ugan­da are in Group B and Afghanistan, Pak­istan, Papua New Guinea, and Zim­bab­we are in Group C.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Health re­lease non-na­tion­als (Per­sons who are not cit­i­zens or per­ma­nent res­i­dents of T&T): "All per­sons who - are not cit­i­zens or per­ma­nent res­i­dents of T&T and have vis­it­ed the coun­tries list­ed above with­in a four­teen (14) day time pe­ri­od of their ar­rival in T&T will not be al­lowed en­try in­to T&T at this time.

"The Min­istry will con­tin­ue to as­sess the sit­u­a­tion and ad­vise the pop­u­la­tion of any ad­just­ments to this Health Trav­el Ad­vi­so­ry, as re­quired."

The 2022 ICC U-19 Men’s Crick­et World Cup is card­ed to take place in T&T, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Guyana, and St Kitts and Nevis from Jan­u­ary 14 to Feb­ru­ary 5, fea­tur­ing 16 par­tic­i­pat­ing na­tions in 48 match­es.