The 2022 Commonwealth Games will take place at Birmingham in England with the women’s cricket tournament being held for the first time at Edgbaston. With regards to the West Indies squad that will participate in the Games, the West Indies Cricket Board has decided to send the Barbados Women’s Team as the “representative” side from the West Indies.
On 30th July, the CWI board of directors decided to postpone the 2021 T20 Blaze tournament and the 2021 Women’s CG Insurance Super50 Cup until 2022. The 2021 Blaze Tournament was the West Indies qualifying tournament for the Commonwealth games. The decision to postpone these women’s regional tournaments was taken due to the announcement of women’s ODI and T20I fixtures between the West Indies and South Africa and the ongoing logistical challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic requiring multiple teams to be hosted in one country. These challenges made it very difficult to find a suitable scheduling window. Hence, the board decided to send the Barbados team which had won the 2020 CWI T20 Blaze tournament and was in line with the Commonwealth Games Association Tournament rules agreed by the ICC.
In an interview with IANS, CWI CEO Johnny Grave said, “We want to congratulate the Barbados Women’s team for being named to represent the West Indies in the Commonwealth Games 2022. This is a historic occasion as for the first time Women’s Twenty20 cricket will feature at this prestigious global sporting event, which is a great fillip for our sport and great exposure and opportunity for the players. We wish them all the very best as they compete for the gold medal, and we know they will continue to do West Indies proud.”
The CWI board admitted that despite the year being challenging for organizing tournaments, they were able to invest considerably in several high-performance camps and international fixtures to the women’s squad, conducted by Courtney Walsh and his coaching staff. This has proven very beneficial to identify the best available core group of players for the ICC Women’s World Cup Regional Qualifiers who will benefit from the additional resources the CWI has committed to preparing the West Indies Women’s squad.
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