Last year, on 30th March, with much fanfare, it was announced that commencing in September 2022, the final rounds of the next three seasons of the Caribbean Premier League (CPL), the region’s Twenty20 cricket competition, would be hosted by Guyana. For the first time since the tournament began in 2013, the final would not be played in either Trinidad and Tobago, or at Warner Park, Basseterre, St Kitts and Nevis.
“Cricket is much more than a game for us in Guyana, it is a passion, part of our culture and a unifying force. As we celebrate ‘One Guyana’ the hosting of the CPL final will be an energizing force. We welcome all to the greatest celebration of music, pageantry, Caribbean vibes with a South American touch, and of course, cricket played loudest,” proclaimed President Irfaan Ali.
Similar euphoric statements were expressed by Pete Russell, Hero (the event’s sponsor for the period of 2015 – 2022) CPL CEO, who was ecstatic about the “mouthwatering prospect” of “having the Hero CPL final in front of this wonderful [Guyanese] crowd of passionate and knowledgeable fans,” and the positive relationship with the government and cricket authorities in Guyana in their agreement to host the finals.
The fifth phase, the final set of league matches and the play-off round of matches, of this year’s tournament, now sponsored by Republic Bank Limited (RBL), shifted to Guyana last week Wednesday, 13th September. The Guyana leg kicked off with a game between the local franchise, the Guyana Amazon Warriors, and the defending champions, the Jamaica Tallawahs, before a packed house of fanatical Twenty20 cricket followers, at the Guyana National Stadium at Providence, where all the CPL games are played.
The previous day, Tuesday, 12th September at 6:08 pm on a live feed on the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport’s (MCYS) Facebook page, Minister Charles Ramson, who appeared to be standing in a washroom at the National Stadium inspecting the progress of maintenance work, could be heard addressing the workers, “Make sure you all finish tonight.” Twenty-four hours before the fans started pouring into the ground en masse, a maintenance crew was still busy trying to make washroom(s) presentable for an international sporting event which was being televised around the world. This last-minute, ‘lick-and-promise’ approach obviously didn’t cut it since the washrooms at the stadium, following a cursory inspection, cannot be classified as having met the standards required for international events.
While this national embarrassment was evolving on Tuesday evening, another one was brewing almost simultaneously at the National Track and Field Centre at Leonora, West Coast Demerara, where the Guyana Golden Jaguars Men’s team was waging battle with The Bahamas, in a fixture in the 2023/24 CONCACAF Nations League, on the most atrocious of playing surfaces. The field was heavily discoloured in several areas, appearing to have been seeded with several species of grass of varying pigmentation. The coaches of both teams expressed absolute disgust at the terrible state of the playing area, and the Bahamian coach was initially rather reluctant to allow his team to participate for fear of injury.
National Coach Jamal Shabazz compared the “horrible pitch” to the beautiful one that Guyana had just played on in Antigua (of all places, where there is hardly any rainfall), and lamented that he could only dream of the day when Guyana will have a proper surface to play on. Shabazz went as far as to suggest that we should play our home games away until this totally unacceptable state of affairs is rectified.
There are two indoor facilities within the city limits. The Cliff Anderson Sports Hall (CASH), on Homestretch – appropriated from its predecessor, D’Urban Park Racetrack – Avenue, built in the mid-1970s, is currently undergoing a complete refurbishment, an exercise which commenced earlier this year. The Gymnasium, a smaller facility, which is located quite near to the CASH on Mandela Avenue, requires urgent repairs to its leaking roof. One would hope that the authorities are not waiting for the original donors – it was a gift from the Venezuelan Government – to perform the restoration.
The state of the National Stadium has not escaped the eyes or the fingers of the attendees of the RBL CPL matches over the last week. They have taken to social media platforms to lay bare their thoughts and feelings on the washrooms, and the ‘quick fixes’ on various infrastructure around the stadium.
When the government signed on to host the CPL Finals 18 months ago, there must have been an awareness of the international status the “World’s Biggest Party” had acquired in its relatively short existence. In fact, in the media announcement informing of Guyana being selected as the three-year host, it stated that the worldwide viewership had grown to 500 million.
One would have expected that the government, anxious for positive exposure, would have prioritised (over the CASH) pulling out all the stops to ensure that the facilities of the National Stadium were on par with those of international sports arenas. Attention ought to have been given to procuring the best pitch curator available to ensure that the playing surface was in tip-top shape. In addition, all spectator comforts – seating, lighting, washrooms, security, vending, among others – should have been attended to way ahead of the opening night as it was known long in advance that the glare of the international media’s spotlight would be on Guyana.
All around the country, major infrastructure works are in progress, with a lot more in the pipeline, according to those in authority. The mantra oft repeated is that these projects are intended to improve our living standards. No one can have a quarrel with this, but one must question how long these improvements will last. It is no secret that maintenance has long been the Achilles heel of successive administrations in this country. Our sporting facilities, schools, roads, kokers, and other infrastructure, are usually left until they arrive at a state of near dilapidation before they are attended to. At which time, millions have to be spent on their rehabilitation.
As far as cricket is concerned, one cannot help but to compare the current situation with the privately-owned Georgetown Cricket Club at Bourda, which was in its heyday up to the mid-90s, before losing most of its esteemed membership to migration. Both the structure (facilities) and the grounds were of international standard. Current managers of local sporting facilities would do well to take a page out of that book. However, they would first have to be able to step away from what our late National Poet Laureate Martin Carter referred to as “the sugar cake and donkey cart mentality,” and be cognisant of the fact that they are not running cake shops. One can only hope.
