THEY were conspicuous by their absence and the man responsible for organising the next World Cup in the Caribbean in 2007 hinted yesterday it could affect their chances of being awarded matches.
Guyana and Antigua are the only two of the venues for international cricket in the West Indies not represented on an official delegation of 17 that has been here for the past week observing how South Africa has arranged and run the current event.
“Obviously, those territories that are here would have participated and would have seen first hand the experiences of the South African cricket World Cup,” Chris Dehring, head of Windies World Cup 2007, the company formed by the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) to plan and manage the tournament, told a media conference here.
“We are going to have a very competitive situation in the Caribbean when it comes to the award of matches,” he said. “This will possibly put these territories at a competitive advantage. They would have seen first hand and learned what the cricket World Cup really entails.”
Dehring, the Jamaican investment banker and former head of marketing at the WICB, explained that all the member territories had been invited to the present exercise.
Anguilla, Barbados, Grenada, Jamaica, St.Kitts, St.Vincent and the Grenadines, St.Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago are those represented, either by cricket or government officials.
Although it was invited, the Caricom secretariat also sent no one. It was an omission that Dehring skirted around. “I can say that Caricom is represented here in the sense that it is really a union of individual countries,” he said.
“Caribbean prime ministers have given their full fledged support,” he asserted. “We meet quite regularly with the prime ministers themselves, we present what is happening, we keep them updated and they even have a cricket sub-committee that is dealing with the cricket World Cup so the seriousness of intent of Caricom is there.”
“They know, we know and the world knows that we would not be able to host the cricket World Cup to international standards without their full support and participation,” he added.
The delegation that also includes WICB personnel and representatives of Cable & Wireless, the main sponsor of West Indies cricket, has been to Cape Town, Kimberley and Johannesburg, attending matches and holding briefing sessions with various groups involved in the planning and running of the current World Cup. “From feedback I’ve been getting from the members of the delegation, it’s been an eye opener,” Dehring said. “I don’t think most of us really appreciated how the cricket World Cup has become a global event.”
“Coming here and seeing how it has blossomed through the efforts of South Africa and the ICC they’ve got first hand knowledge of the scale and scope of this event,” he added.
Dehring praised the current tournament as “the best cricket World Cup ever”, adding “until Windies World Cup 2007.”
But he said South Africa had “raised the bar” for future standards. The information gleaned by the delegation here had been “very useful in creating a greater appreciation of the size, scope and magnitude of hosting the event.”
Based on what he had seen in South Africa, he maintained his original estimate that the World Cup could inject as much as US$500 million into the economies of participating Caribbean territories over a period of six weeks in 2007.