2025 Caribbean T20 tourney to decide Olympics representative

ST JOHN’S: A domestic T20 competition in 2025 is in the works to determine who will represent the region at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.

This was revealed by Cricket West Indies (CWI) president, Dr Kishore Shallow, who said talks were already under way with the Caribbean Premier League (CPL) to stage the domestic competition next year.

“To add cricket to the agenda in the next Olympics is certainly going to be something tremendous as we did in the Commonwealth Games a couple years ago when we had one of our teams representing the females.

“We at the time chose our original women’s tournament and the winner at the time was Barbados so they represented the region,” Shallow said.

“We anticipate something similar will be done unless they tell us all the teams can come and participate, which would be ideal, but it is unlikely for that to happen.”

Shallow explained that because the CPL was a franchise-based tournament, the winners of that competition could not represent the region.

However, he said once a domestic T20 competition was held, the winner would most likely be selected to compete at the 2028 Olympics.

Shallow revealed that he was already in discussion with Caricom leaders.

“We have been in discussion with CPL for them to fund a domestic T20 tournament starting next year. I think Miles Bascombe and his team have already scheduled a window for that next year in 2025.

“Once we are able to have that tournament, then we can use that to determine which team, or teams will participate in the Olympics on behalf of CWI,” Shallow said.

“We can’t use the CPL as it is now because it’s franchises. But in the domestic tournament that we’re having, which will still have a commercial model to it but not to the extent of CPL, but that will more than likely be territories instead of franchises so we will be able to identify teams.”