BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) has pulled the One-Day International and Test match from Jamaica, in the wake of the ongoing violence in the capital Kingston.
The games will now be hosted in Trinidad and Tobago at the Queen’s Park Oval, after several other venues were also considered.
Sabina Park was ruled out because of the state of emergency declared in some sections of Kingston, after violent gun battles erupted between security forces and armed supporters of powerful don Christopher “Dudus” Coke, who is facing extradition to the United States.
“Once a decision was made to move the matches, we had to consider all the available venues to us and there were a number of factors you had to consider in moving the matches,” WICB chief executive Ernest Hilaire told CMC’s Caribbean NewsLine Sports.
“One of course is to have the hotel room stock readily available for the period for which you want the rooms. You have to consider the commercial considerations, you have to consider the readiness of the facilities to host matches. “We also [took into] consideration the fact that Trinidad had matches scheduled and the matches had to be moved through no fault of the cricket lovers or cricket authorities in Trinidad and we decided that the best place to move the matches to was in fact Trinidad.”
The ODI, the final one of the five-match series, is slated for June 3 with the Test scheduled for June 10-14, the same dates that obtained for the Jamaica fixtures. Queen’s Park Oval had been originally supposed to host the two-match Twenty20 International series along with the first two games of the ODI series but the matches were switched to Antigua to accommodate general elections.
A two-day warm-up match, originally scheduled for Chedwin Park in the Jamaican parish of St Catherine, will now also be played in Port of Spain, with the venue to be announced shortly.
Hilaire said the WICB had forthright discussions with the Jamaican cricket authorities in reaching the decision.
“We had some very frank open dialogue and once we explained to the Jamaican authorities basically what was being considered I think they were very reasonable in their understanding of the situation,” Hilaire explained.
“We had little difficulty in getting the Jamaicans to understand and accept the fact that matches had to be moved.
Reports yesterday said 44 people had already been killed as security forces continued their incursion in the volatile West Kingston area of Kingston.
