ST JOHN’S, Antigua (CMC) – Cricket West Indies (CWI) chief executive officer Johnny Grave said the West Indies playing schedule for the next year will be packed and it is taking shape.

Grave said he and the cricket operations team are busy working on plans for Windies’ participation in the Twenty20 World Cup from October 17 to November 14 in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman.

Although the West Indies white-ball players will be extremely busy during the period before the end o0f the year with a white-ball tour of Pakistan in December also on the cards, Kraigg Brathwaite and the Test side will also have a chance to get onto the field with a Test tour to Sri Lanka in November in the works.

“It’s still in the planning stage,” Grave told the Trinidad Newsday newspaper on the tour to Sri Lanka. “We’ve got every intention of going to Sri Lanka for two Test matches immediately after the World Cup.”

“With all the overseas tours, we’re always getting updates and medical advice in discussions with the boards.”

“We’re going to be finalising travel arrangements in terms of COVID-19 restrictions and quarantines and, in the case of Pakistan, we always have independent security advice by people who are used by all the international boards and the ICC (sport’s world governing body, International Cricket Council).

“In 2018, we had an independent security manager with the team. I don’t anticipate us changing anything from what we did in 2018, in terms of going through a clear and robust process before the players (leave) the region.”

CWI has laid out a packed cricket schedule all the way to the close of next year, which ends with a two-Test series against hosts Australia.

In-between, CWI hopes to stage the West Indies Championship, the four-day first-class competition, which has not been held since February 2020 because of the logistical challenges that come with the movement of teams during the COVID-19 pandemic, and another edition of the West Indies Super50 Cup.

The cricket schedule, which also includes separate England white-ball and Test tours of the Caribbean in the first three months of the new year, an India white-ball tour of the Caribbean around July and a full tour by New Zealand between July and August, is likely to be discussed at a CWI board of directors’ meeting, which started yesterday.