WICB should close shop

20

As it stands now, the entire Local Organising Committee, LOC, for Cricket World cup 2007, CWC2007, here in St Vincent and the Grenadines and indeed throughout the Caribbean must be considered the laughing stock of the entire international sporting community. Long before the commencement of the goat cook warm up matches were held here, I chastised our LOC and the CWC2007 Organisers for their profound insensitivity to the cricketing culture of our Caribbean peoples. I berated the unbelievable weakness of these LOCs across the region and the respective national Governments, lame ducks, as they surrendered our cultural sovereignty and capitulated to the wishes of the International Cricket Council, ICC.

Today, with the CWC2007 coming to a close and with no West Indies in the semi finals, the many harsh restrictions have been lifted. At this late stage we are attempting to get the international sporting community an opportunity to finally see firsthand the way we normally engage ourselves when we attend a cricket match.Today, at this late stage we are seeking to have our Caribbean people represented among the sea of visitors, embarrassed that perhaps, just perhaps, we sought to make so much money from gate receipts that we ignored the nature of the respective economies in the countries where we allocated matches in the CWC2007.

Restrictions Galore
The national Governments all rushed to pass legislation that effectively diminished our peoples’ ability to have genuine fun at the sport that has come to mean so much for us. In hindsight it does appear that the Governments of the region did not take the time to understand what they were signing nor the implications for our sport loving peoples. They seemed so anxious to appear to be sport lovers themselves especially as such an approach always seems to win votes.
Small wonder then that the cricketing authorities were always quick to point out that they were authorised to implement the harsh and un-Caribbean measures for the CWC2007 because our Governments had already signed in support of them.