ST JOHN'S, Antigua (CMC):

CHASTISED ABOUT the format of the regional four-day, first-class championship, the West Indies Cricket Board, (WICB) as promised, has moved to beef it up by making three meaningful changes.

First and most distinctively, the WICB has taken the advice of several stakeholders and have elongated the competition which will now be contested on a home-and-away format and feature 14 rounds of matches.

Second, the regional governing body has abolished the season-ending Challenge Final between the top two sides in the competition.

Valuable match practice

And the WICB has also accepted the advice to run the season concurrently with the international home series - in this case, England - to allow regional players the chance to have valuable match practice.

Next year's regional first-class championship opens on January 9, and it will again feature seven teams - the six traditional, territorial sides of Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Leeward Islands, Trinidad and Tobago and Windward Islands, as well as the Combined Campuses and Colleges - with one of the teams 'sitting-out' in each round of matches.

In the opening round of matches, Leeward Islands are set to host reig-ning champions Jamaica at Warner Park in St Kitts, traditionally-strong Barbados face last season's runners-up Trinidad and Tobago at Ken-sington Oval in Barbados and Windward Islands meet Guyana at Queen's Park in Grenada.

It is the first time in three years that teams will have a chance to play on a home-and-away format, but no matches have been scheduled in territories at the same time that an international match is being contested there.

As a consequence of the format change, next year's champions will now be crowned on the basis of the team that has accumulated the most points.

This means that the Challenge Final, which had become something of a meaningless jaunt in recent seasons, has been eliminated.

The Challenge Final was first introduced when the WICB had extra-regional sides, starting with England A almost a decade ago, take part in the competition.

But subsequent administrations of the WICB found the experiment of the extra-regional sides, which also included visits from India A, Bangladesh A and Kenya, meaningless and costly. This idea was abandoned, but the Challenge Final remained until now.

The format for the season, however, should please the players, West Indies head coach John Dyson, the selection panel, and several icons of the game in the Caribbean, all of whom believe that part of the failings of the West Indies team in recent times directly resulted from too little first-class cricket in the Caribbean.

Strong performance

The players, in particular, will rejoice that the competition will run simultaneously with the England series, since a strong performance during this time could 'fast-track' them into the West Indies team.

Unfortunately, the season will long be over, through no fault of the WICB's, when India visit for four one-day internationals and Bangladesh for two Tests and three ODIs.

Because of the packed international calendar, the second half of the international home season is perilously scheduled to be contested between the middle of June and early August, when the weather can be a major factor.