Barbados to represent West Indies in Birmingham Commonwealth Games 2022

Birmingham Commonwealth Games 2022, Cricket West Indies (CWI) announced on Saturday (August 14). The cricket leg of the event will feature eight teams and is set to be played between July 29 and August 8.

Although the Caribbean Islands participate as West Indies in the ICC tournaments, only one of the countries from the Islands can participate in the Commonwealth Games. The T20 Blaze tournament was supposed to act as the qualifying tournament with the winners representing the region but CWI has decided to postpone the competition along with Super50 Cup to 2022 on Friday (July 30). The decision meant 2019 Blaze winners Barbados have earned the place to be the representative team from West Indies according to the Commonwealth Games Association Tournament rules that ICC has agreed to.

“We want to congratulate the Barbados Women’s team for being named to represent the West Indies in the Commonwealth Games 2022. This is an historic occasion as for the first time Women’s Twenty20 cricket will feature at this prestigious global sporting event, which is a great fillip for our sport and great exposure and opportunity for the players. We wish them all the very best as they compete for the gold medal, and we know they will continue to do West Indies proud,” Johnny Grave, CEO of CWI, said.

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Australia, India, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan based on their ICC T20I ranking as of April 1, 2021 will join hosts England as the six other sides. Eighth team of the event will be determined by Commonwealth Games Qualifier tournament.

West Indies will be hosting South Africa in an eight match series from August 31 to September 19 ahead of the ICC Women’s World Cup Qualifier that’s scheduled to be played in Zimbabwe in November.

“It has been a challenging period with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic at our doorstep, and we have been forced to take the decision to postpone the Women’s T20 Blaze and Women’s Super50 Cup for this year. We have however been able to invest in several high-performance camps and international fixtures to the women’s squad, conducted by Courtney Walsh and his coaching staff. These have been hugely beneficial to date and we have identified a core group of players who are the best available in the region for the ICC Women’s World Cup qualifiers who will benefit from the additional resources that CWI is committing to preparing the West Indies Women’s squad,” Grave concluded.