ST JOHNS, Antigua (CMC) — Barbados will host the majority of matches in next year’s England T20 International (T20I) and Test tours of the West Indies, with Antigua and Grenada set to be the venues for the remaining games in Cricket West Indies’ (CWI) most lucrative home tour.

CWI announced the match schedule and venues for the tours in January and March 2022, in a statement yesterday.

Fully vaccinated fans will be allowed at Kensington Oval in Barbados, where the first-ever five-match T20I Series between the two teams will be played, and the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium in Antigua which will host a warm-up match and the first Test. The second Test will be played at Kensington Oval while the final match is set for the National Cricket Stadium in Grenada.

Kensington Oval will host all the T20I matches and one of the Test matches.

“We are delighted to be able to confirm the venues for this extended West Indies vs England T20I and Test Series. The history and rivalry between the two teams create great anticipation for fans here in the Caribbean and around the world. These fixtures are part of a bumper year of international home cricket, running from January to August in the Caribbean,” CWI CEO Johnny Grave said.

The T20I Series will be played across a nine-day period from January 22 to 30, 2022, including two consecutive weekends of back-to-back T20I cricket.

Following West Indies’ white-ball tour of India in February 2022, the regional side will welcome England back to the Caribbean for a three-match Test Series to compete for the newly created Richards-Botham Trophy.

CWI said that trophy honours two legends of cricket, Sir Vivian Richards and Lord Ian Botham, whose friendship and on-field heroics became synonymous with some of their respective teams’ greatest Test match moments.

“A West Indies vs England home Test Series is the biggest sporting and sports tourism event in the Caribbean. Dating back to 1930 when the first England team visited, these fixtures are steeped in history and a new chapter in this great rivalry will be written — this time with the prize of the new Richards-Botham Trophy,” Grave said.

“Celebrating these two heroes of cricket and lifelong friends with the new trophy, staging world-class cricket and hosting thousands of England fans will be a welcome boost for cricket and for the whole region. We are all really looking forward to welcoming fully vaccinated England fans who can not only enjoy some winter sun and Caribbean hospitality but also some world-class cricket with both these England tours, as well as the ICC U19 Cricket World Cup that will also take place in the West Indies in January next year.”

The much-anticipated Test Series will start at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium on March 8, 2022 before moving to the Kensington Oval for the second Test starting on March 16. The third Test match will bowl off on March 24 in Grenada.

The Test Series is a key fixture in both teams’ International Cricket Council (ICC) World Test Championship schedule, which will determine the best Test match cricket team in the world by 2023.

The Test series will be broadcast exclusively live on BT Sport in the UK, as well as with CWI’s exclusive broadcast partners in key territories around the world.