ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – Crick­et West In­dies has wel­comed the un­veil­ing of the men and women’s ICC Fu­ture Tours Pro­gramme, which will be high­light­ed by ma­jor home se­ries against pow­er­hous­es In­dia and Eng­land next year and the stag­ing of the men’s Twen­ty20 World Cup in the Caribbean.

The men’s side will take on In­dia in Ju­ly and Au­gust while Eng­land will tour the Caribbean for a white-ball se­ries in De­cem­ber, the fix­tures form­ing part of over 150 in­ter­na­tion­als sched­uled to be played dur­ing the new 2023-27 FTP cy­cle.

West In­dies Women, mean­while, will play 66 match­es dur­ing the first-ever Women’s FTP which runs from 2022-25. The eight-match se­ries against New Zealand Women in An­tigua next month will kick­start the cy­cle for the Caribbean side be­fore they turn their at­ten­tion to a Tri-Na­tion Se­ries in South Africa Women in­volv­ing In­dia Women at the start of 2023.

“Crick­et West In­dies is pleased that the new men’s and women’s FTP has been agreed as it pro­vides some cer­tain­ty of our bi­lat­er­al tours and match­es across all for­mats against all oth­er Full Mem­ber na­tions,” said CWI chief ex­ec­u­tive John­ny Grave.

“The ma­jor high­light dur­ing the pe­ri­od will be our joint host­ing of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup in June 2024, where we will part­ner with the USA to de­liv­er an event of the high­est qual­i­ty on and off the field.

“The host­ing of the Men’s T20 World Cup will help to in­spire the next gen­er­a­tion of young West In­di­ans and re-ig­nite the crick­et­ing pas­sion of our fans in the Caribbean and around the world, as well as pro­vide a lega­cy and cat­a­lyst for growth of the sport with­in the US.”

He con­tin­ued: “We are al­so pleased that we have once again been able to se­cure full win­dows for the In­di­an Pre­mier League and Caribbean Pre­mier League for our play­ers as we try to find a bal­ance be­tween our in­ter­na­tion­al com­mit­ments and the sig­nif­i­cant earn­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for our play­ers from do­mes­tic leagues.”

CWI Di­rec­tor of Crick­et, Jim­my Adams, ap­plaud­ed the in­au­gur­al women’s FTP, and said the re­gion­al board would con­tin­ue to pro­vide the re­sources need­ed by West In­dies Women to ex­cel.

“The first-ever FTP put out by the ICC re­flects the in­creased promi­nence of Women’s Crick­et and will be an in­cen­tive for con­tin­ued in­vest­ment by Crick­et West In­dies in the women’s game,” said the for­mer Test cap­tain.

“CWI has great­ly in­creased in­vest­ment in­to the women’s game in the last few years and the aim across this up­com­ing FTP cy­cle is to in­crease the lev­els of con­sis­ten­cy from our women across for­mats, both in bi­lat­er­al se­ries and world events.”

West In­dies men al­so face a hec­tic year in 2024 with a daunt­ing all-for­mat tours of Aus­tralia, fol­lowed by an equal­ly dif­fi­cult as­sign­ment of a three-Test se­ries in­Pak­istan.

West In­dies are sched­uled to host In­dia, Eng­land, South Africa, Bangladesh, Aus­tralia and Pak­istan be­fore the end of 2025.

CMC