Tony Becca - FROM THE BOUNDARYTHE FINAL of the ICC Cricket World Cup in 2007 will be played in Barbados and the opening ceremony will be held in Jamaica.
After making a bid to host the final, Jamaicans, including members of the bid committee and members of Kingston Cricket Club, home of Sabina Park, are disappointed that they did not get it.
There are three reasons why Jamaicans should not cry, however. The first reason is that the system used to determine the allocation of matches was fair and above board; the second reason is that once, as promised, it can deliver in areas such as security and health, Barbados is ideal for the showpiece match of the tournament; and the third reason is that the package awarded to Jamaica may well be the best of the eight.
Barbados is ideal because the first home Test match was played at Kensington Oval; because it has produced more Test cricketers than any other territory; because in players like Frank Worrell, Everton Weekes, and Clyde Walcott, Gary Sobers, Wes Hall and Charlie Griffith, Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes, Joel Garner and Malcolm Marshall, it has produced the majority of the great West Indies players; because over the years Kensington Oval has been the 'Lion's Den' for visiting teams; and because of the fact that when it comes to the love for the game, to the atmosphere at Kensington Oval and all over the country, there is no place in the region like Barbados.
Unlike everywhere else in the region, and certainly Jamaica, when there is cricket in Barbados, nothing else matters.
Although Jamaica's bid was for the final, the package it got is just as good probably even better.
While Barbados, winners of the Black package, will be hosting the final and six quarter-final matches, Jamaica, winners of the Yellow package, will be hosting the opening ceremony, the opening match involving the home team, one set of the first round matches with the West Indies, the home team, as the anchor team, one of the two semi-finals, and that is a blessing in disguise.
In fact, as far as presenting Jamaica to the world is concerned, in retrospect may be that is the package Jamaica should have bid for in the first place.
Although it will have a Caribbean flavour, the opening ceremony provides a wonderful opportunity to sell Jamaica.
Based on the Cape Town experience in 2003, the opening ceremony will be watched by as many if not by more people around the world as the final and it will be the only time that all 16 teams will be in one territory at the same time.
FULL COMPLEMENT
With teams dropping out as the tournament progresses, chances are that Jamaica will be the only territory to host the full complement of journalists who will be around for the tournament.
The opening match, the curtain-raiser, usually draws a large crowd, and on top of that, the semi-finals of a tournament of such stature usually attract as large a crowd as the final.
As a cricket event, the final of the World Cup is the big prize, and that is why previous finals have been played, for example, in places like Lord's in England, the MCG in Australia, and the Eden Gardens in India.
According to Teddy Griffith, president of the West Indies Cricket Board, Rawle Brancker, chairman of ICC CWC WI 2007 Inc., and Chris Dehring, managing director and chief executive officer of ICC CWC WI 2007, however, this will be the best World Cup ever, the best opening ceremony ever, and if it turns out to be so, Barbados will have nothing over Jamaica.
As Ehsan Mani, president of the ICC, said on Tuesday night, however, the important thing now is for every West Indian, every one of the territories, venue or no venue, to work together in an effort to make World Cup 2007 the best ever.
