Our CWC2007 Preparations

39

Caribbean governments must be heavily criticised for their total failure to have first sought a thorough understanding of just what they were getting into when they were asked to support the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) in hosting the Cricket World Cup 2007 (CWC2007). One can safely say that the political leaders who make up the Caricom Heads of government all seem to have been lost on the historic role that Cricket has played in the liberation of our peoples in the Caribbean.

Many of them may well recall the years of struggle to gain international recognition in the game of the former colonial master, England, even as the region sought to fight off the lingering consequences of four centuries of slavery and colonialism.
But that is not in and of itself sufficient reason to justify the giddy-headedness that has overtaken them all in pursuit of the hosting of the Cricket World Cup 2007.
The current buzz around the region over the past several months and even now relates to our general tardiness in the construction industry and our almost total and embarrassing inability to adhere to deadlines.
Even as the evidence suggests that in many instances patrons will probably get some wet paint on their clothes during the CWC2007 matches, the leaders of the respective Local Organising Committees (LOC) are claiming otherwise, blinded perhaps by their own over-inflated sense of importance. Their heads seem buried in the sand.
Had the same course of action taken by the Caricom Heads been pursued by our regional business leaders they would have been dubbed incompetent and lacking in their own understanding of the fundamental principles of management by their respective governments.
But how dare we refer to our political leaders disparagingly?
They have merely been given to an appreciation of the game of Cricket that defies logic and our commonsense understanding of how business is conducted.
It also seems that in respect of the CWC2007 the Caribbean governments appear to be bearing expenses of an order that previous hosts did not have to undertake.
For example, we need to know whether ever before in Cricket World Cup history the ICC ever mandated warm up matches organised by the host. Was it not the case hitherto for the various competing countries to organise their own warm up matches and at their own expense?