Guyana’s world class cricket venue the Providence National Stadium has been given the thumbs up sign by the International Cricket Council’s Venue Assessment Team.
The team is currently conducting its mandatory venue inspection ahead of next year’s ICC Twenty20 World Cup which will be held in the Caribbean.
Speaking at a press conference held at the Princess Buddy’s Hotel yesterday, the team, headed West Indies Cricket Board’s (WICB) ICC 2010 Twenty20 World Cup Tournament Director Ernest Hillaire, ICC’s events manager, Chris Tetley and ICC’s Media and Communication’s Manager, Brian Murgatroyd, all spoke glowingly of the venue, built in 2007 for the World Cup.
According to Tetley, the fact that most of the venues were newly built or refurbished to host the ICC Cricket World Cup in 2007, meant that the team members came to the venues with a great degree of optimism that things would have already been in place for the staging of next year’s event.
“Well, first of all the ICC is happy to be in Guyana once again for this event. We were confident in advance that the stadium here would be ready because, unlike the 2007 Cricket World Cup, the venues here must be able to host double headers everyday and I must say we were very encouraged that this venue could do such,” Tetley declared.
“I was mostly looking for the set-up in which it has to accommodate the hundreds of media workers and reporters and I must say I was very, very impressed,” said Murgatroyd, who added that the stadium was on par with all the top venues in the world in this regard.
“You can see that a lot of planning was put into building the venue which is good because you must think of long term. The set up for television for the Twenty20 as compared to the actually World Cup is very different because for one match alone you have anything up to 35 cameras,” the ICC Media and Communications Manager noted.
He also stated that though the venue came in for high praises from the members of the inspection team; there were a few changes documented that should be made.
Financing
The ICC would be the financiers of the historic event unlike in 2007 when the governments of the various host countries played an important role.
Hillaire said that this time around the ICC has made the commitment to solely finance the event.
He explained that because the World Cup was coming to the Caribbean for the first time, the WICB had to get the governments to sign on because of certain infrastructure work the cost of which the WICB could not have borne at that time.
He made reference to the security and accommodations arrangements which the governments had to make sure were adequate and were to the requirements of the ICC.
This time around, he said, the ICC will be taking a more hands-on approach.
True West Indian culture
In 2007 when the World Cup was held in the Caribbean, there were loud cries from the spectators that the stringent rules and regulations that were set by the ICC, took away the West Indian flavour and culture of the cricket.
However, Hillaire noted that this was atop the WICB agenda when they sat down with the ICC to discuss the staging of the Twenty20 World Cup.
“The WICB made it clear that the disappointments of 2007 must not be repeated…we made this a very strong case to the ICC, so I think it will be different and West Indians will be given a chance to bring out the true colours of cricket in the Caribbean.
This was endorsed by the ICC’s events manager who pointed out the ICC will make the necessary corrections.
“The ICC has recognized the faults from 2007 and we would certainly make the adjustments in 2009. The real flavour of Caribbean cricket would be showcased to the world.
Twenty years ago when the Caribbean were beating drums and playing music at a test match, they were still sitting and clapping and so on; so the Caribbean is always 20 years ahead and like I said, I’m very excited about having the Caribbean host the Twenty20 world cup in 2010” said Tetley.
The official launching of the tournament will be held in St Lucia tomorrow where the organisers would unveil the official tournament schedule, logo and theme.
