BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) says the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has cre­at­ed a chaot­ic sit­u­a­tion with air­lift, which has forced the re­gion­al board to re­sort to cum­ber­some routes to get play­ers from their re­spec­tive ter­ri­to­ries.

Crick­et op­er­a­tions man­ag­er, Roland Hold­er, said that with some bor­ders in the Caribbean still closed and lim­it­ed flights avail­able, the task of trans­port­ing play­ers and of­fi­cials had be­come even more dif­fi­cult and in some cas­es, more ex­pen­sive.

“From where we sit, we’ve had to fly per­sons through the US to get them in­to var­i­ous [Caribbean] coun­tries, whether it’s An­tigua, whether it’s St Lu­cia,” Hold­er said.

“We’ve had to fly peo­ple through the US. There are al­most no flights com­ing out of Trinidad so you can’t put some­body on an air­plane on a dai­ly ba­sis and say ‘hey, you need to get to point A or B’ so yes, there are chal­lenges.

“It’s more ex­pen­sive, it’s more time con­sum­ing. Your jour­ney in some in­stances will take even longer.”

Bor­der clo­sures have be­come more wide­spread, not on­ly in the Caribbean but glob­al­ly, as re­spec­tive gov­ern­ments have used the mea­sure as part of their over­all COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions to com­bat the spread of the virus.

As a re­sult, CWI has faced a lo­gis­ti­cal night­mare, and have re­sort­ed main­ly to the use of char­ters to move play­ers to tour­na­ments and se­ries.

The ma­jor fall­out last year at the height of the pan­dem­ic was the scrap­ping of the en­tire in­ter­na­tion­al home sched­ule, re­sult­ing in mas­sive fi­nan­cial loss­es for CWI.

How­ev­er, the re­gion­al gov­ern­ing body man­aged to stage the Su­per50 last Feb­ru­ary and al­so host Sri Lan­ka for a full se­ries, with both events host­ed in An­tigua.

West In­dies are now poised to wel­come South Africa, Aus­tralia and Pak­istan over the next three months and Hold­er said it was crit­i­cal CWI ex­e­cut­ed the up­com­ing tours suc­cess­ful­ly amid the on­go­ing pan­dem­ic chal­lenges.

“Last year we had no in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et in the Caribbean so we have one (Sri Lan­ka) un­der our belt now,” the for­mer West In­dies bats­man and Bar­ba­dos cap­tain told Star­com Ra­dio’s Ma­son and Guest.

“We’re hop­ing to get these three tours un­der­way which of course would gen­er­ate some in­come for us and un­for­tu­nate­ly, you may just have to spend some of that in­come on char­ter flights and COVID test­ing etc but it’s the or­gan­i­sa­tion we are. We are a crick­et or­gan­i­sa­tion so we need to be putting on crick­et.”

South Africa ar­rive on June 1 for two Tests in St Lu­cia from June 10-24, be­fore head­ing to Grena­da for five Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­als from June 26 to Ju­ly 3.

Aus­tralia then fol­low for a five-match T20I se­ries in St Lu­cia from Ju­ly 9-16 be­fore head­ing to Bar­ba­dos for three One-Day In­ter­na­tion­als from Ju­ly 20-24.

And Pak­istan round off the home sched­ule when they take on the hosts in an­oth­er five-match T20I se­ries from Ju­ly 27 to Au­gust 3 in Bar­ba­dos and Guyana, be­fore play­ing two Tests in Ja­maica from Au­gust 12-24.

Hold­er said even the in­ter­na­tion­al teams com­ing in­to the Caribbean had faced dif­fi­cult lo­gis­ti­cal chal­lenges.

“South Africa can on­ly get as far as St Mar­tin so we have to move them from St Mar­tin in­to St Lu­cia,” he ex­plained.

“Aus­tralia don’t wish to go through the var­i­ous air­ports and run the risk of be­ing in­fect­ed, so they are char­ter­ing a flight from Down Un­der.

“Pak­istan are com­ing from the UK so they’re some­what eas­i­er. There’s a flight from Man­ches­ter that will get them to their first port of en­try.”

CMC