The England Cricket Board can finally breathe a sigh of relief as West Indies tour of England has almost inched towards reality as West Indies is all set to tour England keeping all medical measures in mind.
The Cricket West Indies (CWI) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Johnny Grave has declared that they are ready to send their team for England tour that starts from July 8th on a chartered flight.
Apart from health security measures, the CWI has asked for chartered flights to fly them out of the Caribbean for three test tour as if reports are to be believed ECB has agreed to all the demands.
Grave said “Clearly I don’t think commercial flying is going to be appropriate over here. So we are looking at a transatlantic charter to get the team to the UK”. After several rounds of discussion between two parties, ECB has now agreed to fly the West Indies Team via chartered flights to the UK which will cost them a huge amount of $500,000.
There are several challenges West Indies Cricket Board has to face as 25 member squad will be travelling to the UK and also the biggest concern is to bring players from all other islands to one location before they can board the flight for the UK. In an interview given to ESPNCricinfo Grave said “Effectively we want to bring everyone to probably Antigua and that’s mainly because the regional airline LIAT have all their aircraft currently based here so it is easier for them to send planes to the islands to come back to this central hub. So we would look to convene players here by late afternoon, and they would get on a charter flight to the UK immediately after that”.
Also, CWI CEO assured that all the players and support staff will be tested before they embark on the plane. As he is very clear on that “ Everyone would go and tested in their local country, all those tests will be sent to Florida and the results would come out within-hopefully-48 hours” he said.
He concluded by saying that “We want four weeks before playing the first test match so we are leaving on the first week of June”.
As the first test match will start from July 8th on Southhampton followed by the second and third test matches on July 16th and July 24 in Manchester.