South African play­ers Tabraiz Sham­si and Rassie Van der Dussen will not fea­ture in this year’s Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) T20 tour­na­ment this year.

Both men are hav­ing prob­lems se­cur­ing a trav­el visa to get to T&T in time for Au­gust 1 to go in­to quar­an­tine ahead of the tour­na­ment.

Sham­si was draft­ed by the Ja­maica Tallawahs and man­ag­er Jeff Miller states that he has been try­ing to get the visa to no avail.

“Sham­si has been mak­ing ap­point­ments at the US Em­bassy in South Africa as well as the UK Em­bassy but every time he gets an ap­point­ment he then gets a mes­sage stat­ing that it has been can­celled. It has been frus­trat­ing for him to get his visa. The two routes out are the US and Eng­land but he has not been get­ting an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be in­ter­viewed for his visa,” said Miller.

Al­so los­ing out on their in­ter­na­tion­al play­er is the St Kitts/Nevis Pa­tri­ots who will have to do with­out the ser­vices of Rassie van der Dussen. The South African is al­so hav­ing prob­lems in ob­tain­ing a visa to get out to the Caribbean.

The Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR) so far have no prob­lems with their in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers ac­cord­ing to CEO of Red Chill­ies En­ter­tain­ment, the own­ers of the fran­chise.

“So far we have not had any prob­lems with our in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers pulling out for any rea­son.”

The Guyana Ama­zon War­riors is al­so re­port­ing that they have not lost any of their for­eign play­ers with man­ag­er Omar Khan say­ing it is just a mat­ter of work­ing out his play­ers’ flight arrange­ments as they are all still on board.

The Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents have not lost any in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers up un­til this point and so too the St Lu­cia Zouks. Ear­li­er this week it was re­port­ed that some in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers may turn away be­cause of the strict COVID-19 pro­to­cols be­ing en­forced in T&T.

Guardian Me­dia Sports un­der­stand that talks are still on­go­ing be­tween the CPL and the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO) Dr Roshan Paras­ram con­cern­ing the pro­to­cols.

Even team own­ers are said to be com­plain­ing about the length of time they will have to stay in quar­an­tine if they come in with their teams in­to T&T.

The 2020 CPL tour­na­ment will be played from Au­gust 18 to Sep­tem­ber 10 and the en­tire tour­na­ment will take place in T&T at two venues, the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba, San Fer­nan­do and the icon­ic Queen’s Park Oval in Port-of-Spain.