Cricket facilities with no marketing plan

No game in 2009

St Vincent and the Grenadines will not be in receipt of any major international Cricket match involving the English tour. The only Windward Island in the fray is St Lucia.

The last time Vincentians hosted the English it was back-to-back ODIs and every one of the concessionaires went smiling to the bank as also did many owners of restaurants and bars around the city. No one would ever forget the experience.

In 2009 we shall all be spectators and the $45m plus cricketing arena would once more remain shrouded in silence.

But St Vincent will have the company of Grenada and Dominica in respect of countries in the Windward grouping that would be without matches for the tour. Of course the marketing buffs would readily offer the explanation that it is not possible to go to each of these countries every year when there is a tour in progress. They would also suggest that the real issue is the capacity of the host country to support large numbers at the gate. These are plausible reasons. The problem of the existence of these huge and expensive facilities with no real marketing plan those related to the rapidly dying sport of Cricket.

There is an urgent need for answers.

The time has come for the Local Organising Committee to complete its work, fold up and move on. The legacies are everywhere evident and what we are seeing have nothing to do with the contents of the little booklet that the LOC had produced indicating its own proposed legacies.

It also seems very unfortunate that the government has not yet come around to the recognition that the time has come for it to right yet another historic wrong, that is of its own making.