At Old Trafford in Manchester, a significant cricketing event took place on Tuesday. The touring West Indies contingent divided themselves into two teams to play a warm-up match ahead of the Test series against England next month.
After more than three months of inactivity, the match was the first time an international cricket team took to a ground.
It wasn't a straightforward process. It involved more than a month of conversations and listening to the medical advice.
Ahead of what is likely to be a historic series amid the coronavirus pandemic, this daily spoke to Johnny Grave, the CEO of Cricket West Indies, on how the board planned the trip, T20 World Cup and the sport's short term future.
Excerpts:
What were your initial thoughts about the series?
The first conversations were around 'how long we would need to prepare' and 'when was the earliest the ECB (England and Wales Cricket Board) could consider hosting us'.
We made it clear to ECB that we would only go if the financial terms were the same, we would be paid for the commercial flight over to the UK, them picking up the match fees of our players and we would only go if it was safe.
That would require our medical practitioners giving us the all clear. Then we went into detailed discussions about what the protocols would be, medical plans and how the ECB could host us in a bio-secure environment.
When did you take the proposal to the players and what were the main challenges?
We had a meeting with the players for them to understand the discussions that we were starting to have, which was maybe it's safe to go to England to play in a bio-secure environment.
We wanted to ensure that the players understood what that meant... Flying on a private jet to UK, staying in a cricket ground with attached hotel facilities, where no one would be able to enter or exit without a negative test and that they would be tested before going and upon arrival.
It was information sharing. We did not take the final proposal to them till like 10 days before they were due to travel.
At some level, was it hard to go from a region that was not severely affected by the pandemic to a region that was, at least for some time, the heart of the pandemic?
The positive thing was, by the time we got to say to the players about the final plan, medical practitioners were saying you would be as safe in England as you would be in the Caribbean.
At the time of that conversation on June 1, the UK situation was improving on a daily basis.
Pretty much all medical practitioners, in the UK, around the world and in the Caribbean, sort of acknowledged and accepted that the peak of coronavirus had hit the UK around the first of April.
The improving situation and our head coach Phil Simmons being there... things contributed towards a different environment when the players had to make that decision.
How hard was it to get the players to commit to the trip?
We didn't try to persuade any of them. We hosted a call between Nick Pearce (chief medical officer of ECB) and our medical practitioners in the Caribbean where they (ECB) talked through the plans from a medical perspective.
Then, our head of operations, Roland Holder, talked through the logistics of how it would all work (testing, flying to Antigua, getting across the Atlantic to Manchester and getting their way to the stadium in Old Trafford).
Then, Roger Harper, our lead selector, took over. He got in touch with players for the Test team including the reserves and the players could either give him a 'yes', 'no' or sleep on it for 24 hours. Of the 25, there was one immediate 'no' (Darren Bravo), two 'nos' the next day (Shimron Hetmyer, Keemo Paul). Six said 'yes' after 24 hours.
The rest said 'okay' straight away. We had been speaking to them for about a month so we were kind of having weekly calls with them.
From the perspective of international cricket, how important is this Tour going to be?
Very. Everyone relies on revenues generated by men's international cricket. Being able to demonstrate to the TV companies — that fund so much of our game — that we can get live sport back on safely I think will be... really important.
We also need to demonstrate that behind closed doors, cricket as a product is almost as good as the real thing with fans.
Therefore, the eyes of the world, from a cricket operation and medical point of view, will be on us because we will be learning an awful lot from these three Test matches.
Do you think this is the start of a new era between CWI and the players? In the past, it's fair to say they have not seen eye to eye on a few issues.
Relationship between the board and players is really good. In the three years I have been here, I haven't seen any issues of a breakdown in trust, or issues like that. We toured Pakistan with the men's and women's teams.
We went through a similar process of information sharing. We now have a window for CPL and we have a window where we don't play international cricket during IPL. Now, every player in the West Indies wants to play for the West Indies and it's great to see that.
Where does CWI stand with respect to the T20 World Cup?
If the ICC, Cricket Australia and the Australian government say the World Cup will take place as planned, we stand ready to go.
We are planning to have the Caribbean Premier League in August/September so all of our players would have had opportunity to try and get into that squad.
We are not sure when that decision will be made (going ahead or postponing the World Cup), hopefully by July that will become clear.
Has the pandemic affected the working of the women's team?
At the moment, they are training at home within their respective countries. We hope to bring them out to our training base in Antigua as soon as regional travel restarts, hopefully towards the end of July. We are still expecting a WC to take place in New Zealand in February.
A lot has been said about the bio-secure model. Do you think is going to be cricket's immediate future?
I think it will vary across the world depending on the teams touring. But, yes, for the foreseeable future, behind closed doors is the way.
So, by extension, a bio-secure model, at least for the short term, will exist.
We have already seen crowds come back into sporting events in New Zealand, cricket played in the Caribbean through the St Vincent T10 league. The St Lucian T10 league is due to start this week.