Howard Walker, Staff Reporter
THE 2005 West Indies Women's Cricket tournament slated to start on Saturday in Jamaica has been cancelled.
Chadine Allen, president of Jamaica's Women's Cricket Association (JWCA), told The Gleaner that after two emergency meetings the regional tournament that should have started on July 16 has been abandoned in light of the hurricane threat.
"Basically we had the meeting (Monday) and we decided to go ahead with the tournament. But we got a call from the secretariat in Trinidad about the other teams having concerns about coming to Jamaica," Allen said.
EMERGENCY MEETING
"We had another emergency meeting and decided to cancel the tournament in consultation with the governing body for three main reasons," she said.
The three reason given were:
1. The players' welfare.
2. The weather and its impact on the tournament and
3. Sponsorship.
According to Allen, four teams expressed fears about leaving their countries at a time when they had received hurricane warnings. Those countries include Barbados, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada and St. Lucia.
But prior to the hurricane threats, the tournament was always in doubt with the organisers finding it difficult to come up with the required amount of cash to host the competition.
"We didn't get a lot of the cash that we had wanted. We were still short by a couple of million," Allen said.
FINAL APPEAL
"We had a lot of the plans put in place and we were going to make a final appeal to corporate Jamaica. So we would have gone ahead with the tournament whether those sponsors had come on board or not," she explained.
The concept of postponing the competition was considered but the president explained that with a later date, most of the athletes participating would find it difficult to get the time.
"We went with cancellation because the players wouldn't be comfortable, of course, and we would have to renew negotiations for accommodation at the UWI seeing that the students would be coming back at this time."
