Visa to Florida a sore point for Caribbean players – Chetram Singh
Details about the format of the Regional One-Day Tournament scheduled to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA were ironed out last evening during discussions when a high level team from the United States Cricket Association (USCA) met with their West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) counterparts in Antigua.
According to President of the Guyana Cricket Board and Vice President of the WICB Chetram Singh the date for the finals will be October 11, 2008 but the fixtures and format have not yet been decided but last evening it should have been on the table.
Singh speaking from his Guyana office to Stabroek Sport stated that normally the tournament consists of six teams – Guyana, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Leeward Islands and Windward Islands. However, the University of West Indies (UWI) which regularly fields a team to the Carib Beer Cup Regional four- day competition has asked to be included in addition to the host USA, making it an eight-team tournament.
Visas
“This is one of those complex issues that has to be ironed out by the WICB as no team is secure,” Singh noted, referring to the issue of visas for the Caribbean nationals in the competition.
He expressed the view that the WICB should have a negotiating machinery in place for the players selected by the respective teams to secure visas to travel to Florida, recalling the incident where Guyanese Devendra Bishu was denied a US Visa to travel to St. Thomas to take part in the 2008 Carib Beer Regional four-day final round fixture between Guyana and the Leeward Islands.
