Casan­dra Thomp­son-Forbes

& Vin­ode Mam­chan

Caribbean Pre­mier League stake­hold­ers will have to ad­here to strict COVID-19 guide­lines dur­ing the 2020 edi­tion of the event here in Trinidad and To­ba­go next month, Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs Sham­fa Cud­joe said yes­ter­day.

One of the big ca­su­al­ties of this will be that there will be no fans in the stands for the du­ra­tion of the tour­na­ment, which will run from Au­gust 18 to Sep­tem­ber 12, 2020.

Cud­joe gave the de­tails of T&T ac­cept­ing the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to host the en­tire event at a news con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in Scar­bor­ough, To­ba­go.

She said a con­tin­gent of over 251 peo­ple, in­clud­ing the play­ers, staff and oth­er of­fi­cials at­tached to the six CPL teams—the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents, Guyana Ama­zon War­riors, Ja­maica Tallawahs, St Kitts & Nevis Pa­tri­ots, St Lu­cia Zouks and the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers—will come in­to T&T for the se­ries and will be quar­an­tined at the Hilton Trinidad in Port-of-Spain and must ad­here to strict COVID pro­to­cols

“They would be do­ing their quar­an­tine pe­ri­od there and they would be test­ed be­fore leav­ing home (coun­tries) to en­sure they are neg­a­tive, test­ed when they get here to Trinidad and To­ba­go and go­ing to quar­an­tine, test­ed on their sev­enth day and test­ed again on their four­teenth day. This is the first time we are host­ing this type of sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ty un­der COVID reg­u­la­tions and un­der this COVID sit­u­a­tion,” Cud­joe said.

She said the Gov­ern­ment reached an agree­ment with the CPL where they will host the tour­na­ment to the tune of US$1 mil­lion, bro­ken down in­to US$500 in cash and US$500 in kind.

See Op­po­si­tion Leader's re­sponse

She said in keep­ing with the new nor­mal, spec­ta­tors will not be al­lowed at the games.

“We have arranged that view­ers or spec­ta­tors would not be al­lowed to go sit and watch CPL. Of course, it would have to be record­ed and live broad­cast­ed and so on, so we are hap­py to part­ner with CPL once again. I think that this op­por­tu­ni­ty presents a tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ty for Trinidad and To­ba­go to mar­ket Trinidad and To­ba­go as a tourism des­ti­na­tion,” she said.

She added, “We have to take all pre­cau­tions and hence there will be no spec­ta­tors at the ground. So you would not be able to wear your team jer­sey and wave your flag at the venue but all these nice things can be done at home.

The match­es will be broad­cast­ed live as CNC3 tele­vi­sion has ex­clu­sive rights.

“We will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion con­cern­ing COVID-19 and to be on top of it, as it is a rolling sit­u­a­tion and re­quires dif­fer­ent rules and reg­u­la­tions as time goes on. Once we bring off this tour­na­ment suc­cess­ful­ly and I am sure we will, then it will be a les­son for us in host­ing oth­er games.”

CNC3 has the ex­clu­sive rights lo­cal­ly for the tour­na­ment.

Cud­joe said no oth­er guests will be ac­com­mo­dat­ed at the Hilton Trinidad while the teams are there.

She said there are eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits to be de­rived, as COVID-19 has put a damper on the norm of is­land-hop­ping for match­es. She said the pre­vi­ous agree­ment T&T had with the CPL in­clud­ed sev­en games, the semi­fi­nals and the fi­nals but this year the en­tire tour­na­ment will be here.

“It (T&T) is the on­ly des­ti­na­tion for CPL this year, so whilst we would have had the play­ers and staff and the tourists here for sev­en days in the past, this year they are go­ing to be here for a min­i­mum of 41 days and we are pleased to have them here and to en­joy the eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits that are go­ing to come from the eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty that this sports tourism event is go­ing to gen­er­ate,” she said.

“The ben­e­fits that will come to us from this in­vest­ment will be get­ting an op­por­tu­ni­ty to mar­ket the des­ti­na­tion. So those in­volved in the tourism sec­tor must get ready to sell, sell, sell. We must sell T&T as a sports tourism des­ti­na­tion, as well as a tourism des­ti­na­tion as a whole and this pro­vides that op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

Com­ment­ing on the prospect of emp­ty stands for a tour­na­ment host­ed at home, TKR man­ag­er Col­in Bor­de said the crowd will be missed.

“The 12th man (crowd) has al­ways been one of the key com­po­nents for us and we are hop­ing that along the way, prob­a­bly if to­wards the end, we are still there that doors may open,” Bor­de told the T&t Guardian.

“We will stay with­in the rules of Gov­ern­ment and CPL. Re­gard­ing the en­er­gy and pas­sion of the crowd, it will be missed. We will just have to dig deep and let our pas­sion and dri­ve take us far in the tour­na­ment.”

Guyana Ama­zon War­riors man­ag­er Omar Khan al­so said it will be a strange ex­pe­ri­ence with­out fans but he was hap­py it was at least still com­ing off.

“It is good news. We have been wait­ing for a while now and I am glad that it has been all ap­proved now,” Khan said.

“It is go­ing to be a tour­na­ment of a dif­fer­ence, the first time we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing this kind of tour­na­ment in the Caribbean. It will be quite a dif­fer­ent at­mos­phere. Caribbean peo­ple are fun-lov­ing, they like to en­ter­tain and par­ty. How­ev­er, know­ing Caribbean fans, I am sure they will be plan­ning limes home by their hous­es to watch the game.”

On the im­pact it will have on the lo­cal TKR team, Khan said: “It will im­pact all the teams not hav­ing fans, the home team will miss their home sup­port. All play­ers will need to ad­just, it is just ex­cit­ing to know that we will have live crick­et again.”