The Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) of­fi­cials have de­cid­ed to stick with the COVID-19 pro­to­cols as out­lined by Trinidad and To­ba­go's Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO) Dr Roshan Paras­ram and will be ar­riv­ing in the coun­try very soon to start putting things in place for the Au­gust 18 start.

Af­ter the gov­ern­ment ap­proved the tour­na­ment to be held ex­clu­sive­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go, it is un­der­stood that some team own­ers and in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers were not too hap­py about the strict COVID-19 pro­to­cols that were put in place for for­eign­ers com­ing in­to the coun­try.

As laid out by the Min­istry of Health, those com­ing in would have to pro­vide a neg­a­tive COVID-19 test on ar­rival. They will then be sent in­to self-iso­la­tion at the Hilton Ho­tel for sev­en days. On day sev­en they will be test­ed and once neg­a­tive they will be al­lowed to join oth­er play­ers in small groups to train for the tour­na­ment. Af­ter an­oth­er sev­en days, an­oth­er test will be ad­min­is­tered and once this is neg­a­tive, the play­er would be able to join the rest of his team­mates ahead of the tour­na­ment.

Af­ter dis­cus­sions be­tween health of­fi­cials and CPL, it was de­cid­ed that the strict pro­to­cols will be ad­hered too for the tour­na­ment to come off.

This means that over the next two weeks, play­ers and of­fi­cials will be fly­ing in­to T&T for the start of their quar­an­tine pe­ri­od ahead of the tour­na­ment. When Guardian Me­dia Sports spoke to a few of the team man­agers of the fran­chis­es, they said that it has been a chal­lenge map­ping out routes for their in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers to come in­to T&T. Bar­ba­dos opened their in­ter­na­tion­al bor­ders on Ju­ly 12 and this coun­try will be a hub for those com­ing in­to the coun­try.

The of­fi­cials and teams will all stay at the Hilton Ho­tel in what will be a bio-se­cure bub­ble for the du­ra­tion of the tour­na­ment. The open­ing week of the tour­na­ment will be staged at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in South Trinidad, while the sec­ond week will be held at the icon­ic Queen's Park Oval in Port-of-Spain. The third week, they are back at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my and will stay there for the knock out match­es ahead of the fi­nals which will be played on Sep­tem­ber 10.