Welcome to the bubble: WI land in Manchester for Tests
Charter flights go island-hopping to pick up Windies cricketers; another gets them to ‘bio-secured’ England for Test series
NEWDELHI:As far as office shuttles go, rarely has there been a grander example than the ones which picked a 33-strong group of West Indies cricketers and support staff from different Caribbean islands on Monday. The squad’s task at hand made the journey all the more special.
The 25 players (14 first team members and 11 reserve) and eight support staff, including a psychologist, were each picked up from their respective islandnations by two charter flights and flown to a common base in Antigua on Monday before departing for Manchester. West Indies and England will do something that will go down in history—they will mark the return of international cricket since the pandemic halted sports across the world in early March, with a three-Test series starting July 8.
The West Indies team landed in Manchester at 10.30am local time, and were seen exiting the airport in masks. Being the first international team in any sport to play abroad since the lockdown, the Windies cricketers have faced some unique protocols, and are set to go through a lot more.
Before they could take the local charter flights to Antigua, their samples were collected last week and sent to Florida, US, to test for Covid-19. All the players and staff tested negative.
A large chunk of the squad is made of players from Barbados, including captain Jason Holder, Kraig Brathwaite, Roston Chase, Shai Hope and Kemar Roach. The charter flight picked them all together from the Grantley Adams Intl Airport, but it also made stops at smaller islands, like at Saint Vincent for reserve players Sunil Ambris and Jomel
Warrican. With all precautionary measures in place, only one cricketer was allowed in each row and all of them could be seen wearing masks. At Antigua, they were briefed by Cricket West Indies CEO Johny Grave before they boarded a transatlantic private charter flight funded by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB).
“This is a huge step forward in cricket and in sports as we travel over to England for this series. A lot has gone into the preparations for what will be a new phase in the game. I’m happy for the support and well-wishes we have been receiving from our loyal and dedicated fans once it was confirmed the tour would go-ahead. This has been a source of great inspiration,” Jason Holder, West Indies captain, said before departing.
“We have a fantastic group of cricketers, coaches, medical staff and support staff and I know everyone is eagerly looking forward to the start of the first match when we can get back on the field of play. There is expectation in the air that we will defend the Wisden Trophy and we will certainly put in the work and give it our all to keep hold of it.”
Upon arriving at Manchester, the Windies cricketers headed straight to the Old Trafford, where they will spend three weeks at the on-site Hilton Garden Hotel, initially in quarantine and then in a training camp. The entire touring party will be tested again as they begin the sevenweek tour where they will live, train and play in a “bio-secure” environment. Those protocols will restrict movement in and out of the venues, so a group of reserve players will travel to train, help prepare the Test squad and ensure replacements are available in case of injury.
“Our main objective is to deliver a safe environment for all stakeholders,” said ECB events director Steve Elworthy.
West Indies is expected to start training from Thursday and will play one three-day and one fourday match, each of which will be an intra-squad event. The squad will then travel to Southampton for the first Test at the Ageas Bowl on July 8. The second will be played at Old Trafford from July 16-20 and the third again at the same venue from July 24-28. There will be no spectators allowed at the three tests.
The venues were chosen because they had hotels attached to them and could be turned into sanitized bubbles. The original tour was scheduled for May and June but was postponed.
The flight cost alone is estimated to be around £400,000, according to a report in The Telegraph, in addition to hiring out entire hotels for the two squads for the duration of the tour. But with the ECB estimating losses of around £252 million if there was to be no cricket at all this summer, these extraordinary measures were seen as necessary.