West Indies get all clear to tour Zimbabwe

The West Indies Cricket Board has confirmed that the five-ODI tour of Zimbabwe at the end of the month will proceed after a report for an independent security firm gave them the all clear.

The side will arrive in Zimbabwe on November 27 and remain there until December 10, playing five one-day internationals before heading on to a full tour of South Africa. The Zimbabwe board had hoped that West Indies would play two four-day matches but it appears that this will not happen.

A statement said that the West Indies Players' Association (WIPA) and West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) have agreed that the tour should proceed but will continually monitor the situation in Zimbabwe from the perspective of safety, security and food integrity.

It is not clear where Dinanath Ramnarine, the CEO of WIPA, stands on the trip. In July he was against the A-team tour to Zimbabwe and that trip was subsequently cancelled after the board struggled to find enough players to go. But Ramnarine has now been co-opted onto the board and as such it seems inconceivable that he could oppose the tour with his WIPA hat on while being on the WICB executive that approved it. It seems unlikely that the security situation has changed between July and now given that at the time the WICB insisted that they had been given the all clear to tour.