PRESIDENT Dr Donovan Bennett says Jamaica Cricket Association (JCA) is still awaiting clarification about the Cricket West Indies (CWI) new Regional Twenty20 (T20) tournament before it can move forward with its plans to enter a team.

The tournament was initially rumoured to be staged to qualify teams from the region for the Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles (LA) in 2028. However, CWI’s Director of Cricket Miles Bascombe said recently that the tournament will instead be used to identify and develop young talent across the region, and is intended to start just under three months from now and run from April 18 to May 11.

“All the specifics have not been sent to us as yet,” Bennett told the Jamaica Observer. “All we know is, there’s a tournament taking place and this tournament is a local one that is sanctioned by the CPL [Caribbean Premier League, the region’s yearly franchise T20 tournament]. We couldn’t have it unless the CPL agreed to it because they are protected under contract.”

One of the key criteria for this tournament is players have to be under 30 years of age and have played less than 10 games for the West Indies. Bennett sees positives.

“So, someone like Nicholas Pooran, who’s only 26 years old and has played umpteen internationals, he would not be able to play,” he said. “However, the CPL sanctioned it because [they] wanted to encourage an opportunity for younger players to develop their game [so as] to get to a point where they can be contracted.”

This was also confirmed by Bascombe in an interview on The Mason and Guests Show, aired on Voice of Barbados 92.9FM recently.

“The aim of this tournament is to target those players who are still emerging and those players coming through who are beyond that age of 23,” he said. “But we’re still working out the actual parameters that qualify players.”

Bascombe said the tournament will be held in Trinidad and Tobago to ease logistics.

“The intention is for us to make that tournament the highest standard possible,” he said. “We want to have it broadcast, and as soon as you start to move countries, then the cost of the tournament rises exponentially because it is not only the players you have to transport, but the TV equipment, TV crew, and so on.”

CWI is still awaiting a meeting with Olympic Games officials before it can go ahead with plans for a qualifying tournament.

“We don’t even know as yet what the Olympics format will be, whether T10 or T20,” Bennett said. “Chances are it will be T20 because the ICC [International Cricket Council] does not recognise T10 cricket. But as far as the age grouping and who’s allowed to play and who’s not allowed to play, that integration will come to us at a future meeting. The next meeting we have with the Olympic group is in April, so we don’t even know for sure what the specifics are as far as that tournament is concerned.”

One of the challenges for cricket associations across the Caribbean is that as cricket only recently gained its status as an Olympic sport, these associations are not yet official members of their National Olympic Committees (NOC). This is, however, not the case for JCA as it is now officially a member association of the Jamaica Olympic Association, Jamaica’s NOC.

This is also why the West Indies Cricket team could not compete at the LA Games, as it represents the region as a whole and could not gain membership to a specific NOC.