The T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) has ex­pressed its sat­is­fac­tion with the process used by Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) to al­lo­cate in­ter­na­tion­al and re­gion­al match­es across its mem­ber ter­ri­to­ries.

​Any sug­ges­tion that CWI has been un­fair or bi­ased in se­lect­ing venues for the 2026 sea­son is un­found­ed and fails to con­sid­er the chal­lenges cur­rent­ly fac­ing the re­gion­al body. This was af­firmed by Stephen Ramkissoon, TTCB trea­sur­er, in re­sponse to re­cent crit­i­cisms made by the pres­i­dent of the Bar­ba­dos Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion (BCA), Calvin Hope.

Hope had sharply crit­i­cised CWI for ex­clud­ing Kens­ing­ton Oval in Bridgetown from host­ing any in­ter­na­tion­al or First-Class match­es in 2026. How­ev­er, the venues cho­sen for that sea­son are Ja­maica, An­tigua, T&T, and Guyana, with West In­dies set to host four Tests, six One Day In­ter­na­tion­als, and six T20 In­ter­na­tion­als be­tween June and Au­gust against Sri Lan­ka, New Zealand, and Pak­istan.

​Ad­dress­ing these con­cerns, Ramkissoon em­pha­sised that the match al­lo­ca­tion process is not ar­bi­trary but care­ful­ly con­sid­ers mul­ti­ple fac­tors and is reached by con­sen­sus, with in­put from the BCA.

“Hope is well aware of CWI’s pre­car­i­ous fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion and that host­ing costs vary con­sid­er­ably among ter­ri­to­ries, re­quir­ing pe­ri­od­ic ad­just­ments,” Ramkissoon said. He high­light­ed that ex­pens­es such as ac­com­mo­da­tion, se­cu­ri­ty, cater­ing, and oth­er ser­vices dif­fer wide­ly across the Caribbean and heav­i­ly in­flu­ence venue se­lec­tion.

​Ad­di­tion­al­ly, pref­er­ences of vis­it­ing teams and the home side’s strate­gic con­sid­er­a­tions re­gard­ing pitch con­di­tions play a sig­nif­i­cant role in de­ter­min­ing match lo­ca­tions.

​The TTCB re­mains con­fi­dent that CWI’s al­lo­ca­tion process fair­ly re­flects the con­sid­er­able in­vest­ments made by ter­ri­to­r­i­al gov­ern­ments in stag­ing in­ter­na­tion­al and First-Class match­es.

“It is wide­ly recog­nised that Bar­ba­dos has his­tor­i­cal­ly host­ed a sig­nif­i­cant share of Test match­es, of­ten at the ex­pense of Guyana and Trinidad and To­ba­go, yet those ter­ri­to­ries sel­dom voice com­plaints, un­der­stand­ing the del­i­cate bal­ance CWI must main­tain,” Ramkissoon added.

As man­ag­er and own­er of Wood­land Sports Club, named 2026 “Club of the Year,” Ramkissoon praised CWI un­der the lead­er­ship of pres­i­dent Dr Kishore Shal­low for pro­mot­ing eq­ui­ty and trans­paren­cy, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the lim­it­ed num­ber of match­es and the large num­ber of po­ten­tial venues.

He al­so ac­knowl­edged the dis­ap­point­ment of not be­ing able to in­clude South Flori­da as a venue, which would have of­fered a valu­able op­por­tu­ni­ty for the siz­able West In­di­an di­as­po­ra there.

“We should all sup­port CWI’s ef­forts to en­gage its ter­ri­to­ries and con­tribute to de­liv­er­ing the West In­dies crick­et prod­uct,” Ramkissoon said. “We re­main con­fi­dent that Bar­ba­dos will be in­clud­ed in fu­ture sched­ules, con­tin­u­ing its proud crick­et­ing lega­cy.”