ES­PN and the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) have reached an agree­ment for the broad­cast of the in­au­gur­al Caribbean T20 Tour­na­ment, Ju­ly 22 to 31, 2010. The tour­na­ment, which will form part of the an­nu­al WICB cal­en­dar, will have the first phase played in Bar­ba­dos (Ju­ly 22 to 25) with the sec­ond phase in Trinidad (Ju­ly 28 to 31).

In the Caribbean, fans will be able to view all the match­es live on the two ES­PN Caribbean net­works–ES­PN and ES­PN2, while high­lights will be avail­able the fol­low­ing day on Caribbean Me­dia Cor­po­ra­tion sta­tions. The ground-break­ing agree­ment al­so in­cludes un­prece­dent­ed live mul­ti­me­dia cov­er­age on ES­PN dig­i­tal plat­forms in­clud­ing ES­PN3.com, ES­PN, Inc.'s US broad­band plat­form, and ES­PN360 broad­band plat­forms in Aus­tralia and Latin Amer­i­ca. The agree­ment al­so in­cludes tele­vi­sion cov­er­age on ES­PN net­works in the UK , the Mid­dle East and Africa, and in Aus­tralia and New Zealand. "The West In­dies Crick­et Board is ex­treme­ly pleased to be stag­ing the Caribbean T20 Tour­na­ment and we be­lieve it will be spec­tac­u­lar event for the play­ers of the re­gion and the mil­lions of fans who wit­ness it," said Dr Ernest Hi­laire, CEO of the WICB. "It is great to see we have formed a re­la­tion­ship with ES­PN to en­sure that our play­ers and crick­et get glob­al ex­po­sure and pro­vide crick­et lovers all over the world with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to get a taste and feel of crick­et in the Caribbean once again."

"ES­PN is thrilled to add this jew­el to our Caribbean pro­gram­ming line-up," Bernard Stew­art, vice pres­i­dent, ES­PN Caribbean and Mar­itime Me­dia, said.� "Crick­et is fun­da­men­tal to grow­ing our brand and re­la­tion­ships in the re­gion, with both fans and clients. This agree­ment will help us move clos­er to re­al­is­ing this goal." Eight teams will be in­volved in the Caribbean T20. The West In­dies ter­ri­to­r­i­al teams: Bar­ba­dos , Com­bined Cam­pus­es and Col­leges, Guyana, Ja­maica, Lee­ward Is­lands, Trinidad and To­ba­go, and Wind­ward Is­lands will be joined by Cana­da. There is a huge in­cen­tive to win the Caribbean T20, with the lead­ing Caribbean team go­ing on to rep­re­sent the West In­dies at the Air­tel Cham­pi­ons League in South Africa in Sep­tem­ber.

The for­mat for the Caribbean T20 tour­na­ment will be two groups of four teams. There will be a round-robin stage in each group�each team will play three match­es �with the top two teams in each group qual­i­fy­ing for the se­mi-fi­nals. The win­ners of the se­mi-fi­nals will ad­vance to fi­nal while the los­ing se­mi-fi­nal­ists will play a third-place play-off. The match­es in Bar­ba­dos will be played on Ju­ly 22 to 25 and the match­es in Trinidad will be played on Ju­ly 28 to 31, with Au­gust 1 as the re­serve day for the fi­nals.