West Indies want to host South Africa between CPL and IPL, but is there a window?

West Indies are hoping to host South Africa for either five T20Is or two Tests in September, according to Johnny Grave, the Cricket West Indies chief executive. But how they manage to squeeze either of this in between the CPL and the IPL is a puzzle: the CPL is scheduled to end on September 10 in Trinidad and the IPL is set to begin on September 19 in the UAE. On top of that, the South African government is yet to grant permission to its cricket team to leave the country since its borders shut down because of the Covid-19 situation in the country.

CSA director of cricket, Graeme Smith, had earlier indicated that South Africa players will need a minimum of six weeks to prepare for a series and they are currently not in an official training camp.

South Africa were originally scheduled to tour the Caribbean to play two Tests and five T20Is from July 23 to August 16 but the visit had to be postponed, like many others, because of the pandemic.

"We very much hope that South Africa will be able to come here in September for either a T20-only tour or a Test-only tour at the very least," Grave told Starcom Radio's Mason and Guests cricket show. "It will be dependent on the IPL. South Africa have a number of their Test players who have IPL contracts, whereas in this current Test team we don't have any IPL players.

"We won't be able to play Test cricket against South Africa during the IPL, Cricket South Africa have made that very clear to us. They've got a commitment to their players to allow them to go and play in the IPL."

West Indies are currently playing a Test series in England, and most of their players will then be seen in the CPL, scheduled for August 18-September 10.

"The plan as we are working on now is that the players would come home [from England], they will have the weekend at home. Those that are in the Caribbean Premier League will head down to Trinidad on probably August 3 so it's a quick turnaround," Grave said. "CPL finishes on September 10. We hope very much that South Africa will follow immediately after that. Whether we can get the full tour in or we're going to have to look at a split tour between the Tests and the T20s, we don't know."