By Adrian Frater, Staff Reporter 
Chris Dehring addresses the media after meeting with the CARICOM leaders in Montego Bay.
WESTERN BUREAU:
CHRIS DEHRING, the managing director of World Cup 2007, said the West Indies was on course in its preparations to host the tournament.
Speaking to the media in Montego Bay shortly after he and a West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) delegation briefed CARICOM leaders, Dehring said the WICB has been hard at work ever since the region won the bid to host the tournament in 1998.
"As far as we are concerned, we are bang on target. We have been doing quite a bit of pre-preparation over the year. In fact we started our preparation from the day we won the bid," said Dehring, who was flanked by outgoing WICB president Wes Hall, chief executive officer Roger Brathwaite and Venue and Development consultant to Cricket World Cup 2007, Don Lockerbie.
"Cricket World Cup 2007 is now with us, South Africa 2003 is over and now the entire cricketing world is now looking at us," Dehring said.
In looking at what territories will be selected to host games, Mr. Lockerbie said their would be a bidding process after tender documents had been distributed by December. He said a decision as to which territories were to be chosen as venues would be decided by March.
"Venues is not just the playing field, it is the complete country," said Lockerbie. "Right now we need airports, marinas, hotels, roads, restaurants and shops, entertainment centres and telecommunication.
"We need all of these items to be absolutely state of the art in order to take all of the traffic and the commercialisation that is coming and therefore the tourism that is coming."
