THE TRINIDAD and Tobago Cricket Board (TTCB) 2022 domestic season officially bowls off, after a two-year hiatus owing to the pandemic, on February 26 with a T10 tournament.
The tourney will be held at Brian Lara Cricket Academy in Tarouba and will feature six teams handpicked from geographical zones by national coaches, the unrelated pair of David and Kelvin Williams.
Initially, the T10 was scheduled to begin in early February but was pushed back because Cricket West Indies (CWI) confirmed use of the south venue for the start of its Regional Four-Day Championship.
The T10 will be followed by Under-19 and Under-15 tournaments beginning on March 2 and 4 respectively.
TTCB president Azim Bassarath welcomed the long-awaited return to play which was made official by the Ministry of Sport and Community Development on January 23.
The Ministry announced that its safe-zone return-to-play proposal, after consultation with stakeholders and officials, had been approved.
Bassarath said all systems are go to resume domestic cricket and affirmed that all TTCB-sanctioned tournaments will abide by the Ministry's regulations.
'The Ministry of Sport and Ministry of Health has already issued guidelines for a return to sport and we will be following those. There is no more permission we need to get from either Ministry to resume.
'Because they have already issued the regulations, we are proceeding with guidelines from those regulations to restart the sport,' he said.
The U-15 and U-19 tournaments will be held at community grounds nationwide. These two events were originally carded to start on February 16 (U-19) and February 18 (U-15) respectively but, owing to rehabilitation works at community facilities, they were rescheduled to March 2 and 4 respectively.
Bassarath said that facelift and sanitisation works have already begun at multiple venues. The additional wait to resume play, he said, allows these workers ample time to get the grounds into good playing condition and players, a chance to extend and amplify their training regime.
'Upon request from some zonal councils, we want to give the U-15 and U-19 players as much time as possible to get enough practice sessions in, and for the zones to bring the grounds, on which these tournaments will be played, up to standard.
'Some regional corporations have already started attending to the grounds. The Princes Town Regional Corporation is leading in that respect.
'On Thursday, a tremendous amount of work was done on the Cunjal Recreation Ground. We have seen work started in certain areas and we hope that other regional corporations will follow,' he added.
On January 5, the cricket board optimistically unveiled its detailed itinerary of events for 2022, two weeks before the Ministry's return to play regulations.
Prior to this announcement, domestic cricket and the majority of other local sports had been prohibited since the pandemic hit in mid-March 2020.
TTCB, alongside the Sports Ministry and Ministry of Health, have mandated that all players, officials
