West Indies Championship

However, in July 2014 the WICB announced that the CCC cricket team was to be excluded from the upcoming 2014-15 Regional Four Day competition.

This came as a series of changes adopted based on the recommendations made in a March 2014 report presented by Richard Pybus, WICB's then director of cricket.

[12] The current structure of the tournament, since the 2014–15 season is a double round-robin league system with the team earning the most points being declared the winner.

After the West Indies were awarded Test status in 1928, the number of games played by Jamaica increased.

In 1956, British Guiana hosted a four-team knock-out tournament, which was repeated five years later but now with the Combined Islands joining in.

[citation needed] The regular competition began in the 1965–66 season, named the Shell Shield (after sponsors Royal Dutch Shell), and the five teams that had contested the 1961 knock-out competed in a round-robin league, with two home matches and two away matches for each team.

[27] Leeward Islands won their first ever title in 1989–90, winning all five games in the league, but Barbados were back on top for the following season.

In the 2005–06 season, the league returned to one round-robin series where teams each play five games before the top two sides meet in the final.

[27] Since 2009 it has been entitled as the Regional Four Day Competition with the winning side lofting the Headley-Weekes Trophy, named after both George Headley and Everton Weekes.

Additionally, it was announced that a franchise system was to be introduced for first-class cricket, similar to that of the Caribbean Premier League, with the six territorial teams being able to select players from all over the region and possibly from overseas.

[32] The regional four-day competition itself was extended to a double round-robin format and also became part of the WICB's new Professional Cricket League, which also included the NAGICO Super50.

The newly extended Regional Four Day Competition will be played on a home and away basis over ten rounds from 14 November 2014 to 23 March 2015.

In 2000/01 four teams progressed to the knockout phase with Jamaica beating the league winner, Barbados in the first semi-final before going on to win the final against Guyana by first innings points in a drawn match.

This form was reversed in the 2001/02 knockout competition when Guyana beat Jamaica in the final on first innings points in a drawn match.

In 2005/06 four teams again progressed to the knock-out phase, where initial league winners Trinidad and Tobago won the final against Barbados.

Barbados' league form was reversed as Jamaica won the knock-out competition (and the Headley/Weekes trophy) against the Windward Islands in the final.