Windies are planning to host India in Florida next July, immediately after the 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup, in a bid “to grow the sport”.
Plans are part of a longer-term commitment to play a minimum of two T20Is in North America every year until 2022.
“There’s full board support as part of our strategic plan over the next five years to bring regular games into the Americas,” Cricket West Indies CEO Jonny Grave told ESPNcricinfo during the current Caribbean Premier League (CPL) campaign in Florida.
“So, not always talking about USA, we’re talking about Canada and other parts to try to grow the sport. The whole ICC strategic plan is around growing the game and we’re huge advocates of Associate cricket.
“We’re big advocates of playing in the Olympics even though one might argue that’s quite complicated because effectively we’d be playing as the separate sovereign countries of the West Indies – but we don’t have a problem with that.”
The games are likely to start at 9pm to allow for local support as well as accommodate the Indian television market.
“That would be our aim,” Grave said. “Clearly we have to discuss that with sponsors and broadcast partners, but realistically when you’re playing India in the Caribbean you have to play either very late at night or very early in the day.
“If you’re playing India, the passion of the India fans, they’ll turn up whether you play at 11am or 9pm at night.”
Grave has distanced himself from rumours that some of England’s T20I fixtures will be relocated to the Central Broward Regional Park Stadium – they are touring the Caribbean from January to March 2019.
“England fans love coming to the Caribbean,” he said. “Even though we have a big England tour of three Test matches, five ODIs and three T20Is, that would be a big decision to take matches out of the region, whereas the travelling India fan is [coming from the USA] and it’s a growing market, so it’s less of a risk to our region to have the England games in the Caribbean and the India matches [in Florida].”
