The kits worn by the teams will be eye-catching and colourful

Backed by billionaire Allen Stanford and cricket legends such as Sir Gary Sobers, Sir Viv Richards and Clive Lloyd, it will feature sides representing 19 different Caribbean nations, all with different coloured kits.

The bats are black, the balls are orange and the helmets are black with a blue and yellow stripe.

BBC Sport's Oliver Brett spoke to event co-ordinator Rhonda Kelly about what lies in store for fans in the region.

Q. So, the tournament begins next Tuesday. How are preparations going?

A. Preparations have been going excellent. We are in a frenzy now. All the teams arrive in Antigua over the weekend so we have 18 visiting teams, and the host team Antigua all in one place.

A round of preliminary matches will eliminate three teams, then we go into a 16-team situation and matches will continue until we get to a semi-final on 11 August and the final under floodlights on 13 August.

TOURNAMENT SCHEDULE 11 July St. Maarten v US Virgin Isles 11 July Bahamas v Cayman 12 July British Virgin Isles v St. Lucia 14 July Grenada v Dominica 14 July St. Kitts v Nevis 18 July St. Vincent v St Maarten/US Virgin Isles 18 July Barbados v Anguilla 19 July Antigua v British Virgin Isles/St Lucia 21 July Guyana v Montserrat 21 July Jamaica v Bermuda 25 July Trinidad v Bahamas/Cayman 26 & 28 July Quarter-finals 11 August Semi-finals 13 August Final

Q. Have you pre-sold plenty of tickets for the matches?

A. Nearly all the matches are free. We are only selling tickets for the semi-finals and the final and the requests for tickets have been amazing from all over the Caribbean and even from people in England.

Q. Is Mr Stanford aiming to replicate the success of Twenty20 cricket in England?

A. He has been in the Caribbean for 22 years so he knows a bit of cricket and he obviously knows it creates so much passion in the Caribbean.

Having been raised on shorter forms of sport - basketball and football - he wanted to do something different.

When he heard of Twenty20 he thought it was something that would revive the (interest among) youths in the Caribbean and get them interested in cricket again because it seemed more interesting than a five-day Test match.

The Stanford 20/20 is a new spin on an old game Allen Stanford

And really, that is exactly what is happening. We are getting interest from the young people and the games are being televised throughout the regions so everyone's going to see it.

Q. Are there going to be some big names competing?

A. Almost all the West Indies players are participating. Jamaica will have Marlon Samuels, Chris Gayle and Wavell Hinds, Ramnaresh Sarwan is captaining the Guyana team, Daren Ganga is captaining Trinidad, so there are lots of big names.

Our smallest country is Montserrat, who are extremely excited to be involved, and there are other countries like Cayman, Bermuda and Bahamas which don't get to be involved in regional cricket tournaments normally.

Q. With the World Cup starting in the region in about nine months time, has there been any involvement between yourselves and the World Cup organisers?

A. There has been a lot of information sharing and we are also allowing the Antigua people to test their World Cup volunteer programme during our tournament

Q. How about the weather? Isn't this supposed to be the rainy season in the Caribbean?

Yes it is, but the weather has been nice and sunny these past few days.

Even if it does rain we will only have short interruptions. Mr Stanford has put in some excellent drainage systems and unless it's actually raining we will be OK for play.

Q. And after this tournament I understand we can look forward to an international Twenty20 series.

A. That's right. In November, the South Africa team are coming to face the Stanford Superstars team which will be selected by the Stanford (West Indies) legends who are involved in this tournament.

There will be plenty of incentive to be selected because there's a $5m purse for the winning team in November.