File
Executive director of Jamaica's Local Organising Committee for the Cricket World Cup 2007, Robert Bryan (left), and Ambassador-at-large, Courtney Walsh, are seen here at a cricket briefing in South Florida on December 8.

Elpert Fitzwarren, Business Writer

MIAMI, Florida:

When Jamaican organisers and their Air Jamaica chaperones came to town last week to invite South Floridians to matches there for next year's Cricket World Cup, they declared the country ready to host its leg of the tournament and to welcome its visitors.

"Jamaica is ready," Courtney Walsh, former West Indies cricketer and Ambassador-at-large, told journalists at a December 8 briefing at the Air Jamaica offices in Miami. It was essentially the same message that Walsh, who has been on a road show with members of Jamaica's Local Organising Committee for the tournament, took to a town hall meeting that same evening at the chambers of the Lauder Hill city commission.

"I don't want to repeat myself," Walsh said, "but we are ready. Jamaica is where it starts and we have to make sure that we are the best hosts ever. I want the World Cup to be a success."

Next year's Cricket World Cup is being hosted by nine English-speaking Caribbean countries between March 5 and April 28 next year, with the opening ceremony on March 11 to take place at a new multi-purpose stadium in Trelawny on Jamaica's north coast.

Several warm-up matches, a number of early round games as well as a semi-final match will take place on the island. The final will take place in Barbados.

Importantly, too, the West Indies team, which won the inaugural Cricket World Cup in 1975 and retained the trophy four years later, will be based in Jamaica.

So Walsh, a fast-bowler who took more than 500 Test wickets and once held the record for the most wickets in Tests, believes that being the starting place and headquarters of the home team place a special obligation on Jamaica. It has to set the tone for the World Cup. "You can't start poorly and hope to catch up," he said. "Jamaica is where it starts."

Infrastructure

If Walsh believes that Jamaicans will be psychologically ready and willing to roll out the red carpet for the estimated 14,000 or so visitors expected to come to the island specifically for the World Cup, Robert Bryan, the head of the LOC, is confident that the infrastructure will be in place - in Jamaica and elsewhere in the Caribbean.

According to Bryan, the region, "when the world world was looking that the Caribbean to fail," has built or significantly upgraded 12 stadia in preparation for the World Cup - two of those are in Jamaica: the new Trelawny facility and the historic Sabina Park in Kingston, which is undergoing extensive rebuilding.

Built by a Chinese construction company, the Trelawny stadium was handed over in early December, completed, according to Bryan at about US$1.25 billion below its US$30 million budget.

Sabina Park, which will account for most of the rest of the US$63 million budget for stadia and related infrastructure, will be completed and handed over by the contractors by December 23. After that, there will be a minor kitting-out with all temporary facilities to be ready at the ground by February 21.

"In terms of cricketing facilities, we have pretty much met the standards (set by the International Cricket Council (ICC)," said Bryan.

In fact, Walsh, who at 40, is trim, fit and apparently still capable of bamboozling more than a batsman or two, recently played an all-star match at the Trelawny stadium and pronounced the field and its facilities excellent.

Indeed, ICC inspectors have given the thumbs-up to Trelawny as well as the Sabina Park grounds.

Adequate accommodation

Bryan insisted, too, that Jamaica will be able to accommodate all the visitors who come to the island for the World Cup, despite the fact that the early part off the tournament will be during the winter tourist season.

The fact is that that several new hotels, with hundreds of rooms, have opened on the island's north shore in the past three years and the LOC has been able to create a bank of about 500 rooms in Kingston and nearby St. Catherine under a bed-and-breakfast programme.

"We do no consider Jamaica as having a problem with accom-modation," the LOC executive director told reporters at the briefing.

For visitors staying at north coast hotels, say, in the town of Ocho Rios, the trek to Kingston, on the south coast over mountains and deep gorges, though scenic, can be slow, especially during peak traffic hours.

But Bryan said that negotiations are taking place with bauxite/alumina companies about access to their private roads, normally used in the transportation of ore, as partial routes to the capital for tour buses.

Travellers to the World Cup host countries during period of the tournament, an estimated 240,000 to 300,000 of them, will be able to move as within a single border, similar to how a Schengen visa issued by one of the participating European Union states allows borderless entry into the others.

Visa application centres opened in six cities worldwide Friday, in London, New York, Miami and New Delhi.

In essence, the visa regime, at least for the period it lasts, will be a logical extension of the single, seamless economic space being developed by most of the CARICOM member states.

"People will be considered landed (in all host countries) once they have landed (in one)," explained Bryan.

Promotional campaign

Many of those visitors, Bryan and others hope, will be from India and Ireland - two countries on the cutting edge in the information and communication technology sectors - recently visited by the Jamaican organisers to drum up interest at least in the Jamaican leg of the tournament.

While the World Cup will open in March, Jamaica will launch its major promotional campaign for the event on the Kingston waterfront with shows and fireworks from December 30-31.

"The campaign will encompass a symbol of pride," said Bryan. "We want to make this the biggest homecoming for Jamaicans."

With a price tag of US$110 ($7.3 billion), hosting this world cup will not come cheap for Jamaica and there are questions about whether it will be worth it. No one is sure, but Bryan says that Jamaica will still have the infrastructure after the event.

But more important is what it makes of the opportunities presented by being one of the hosts Cricket World Cup, the world's third largest sporting event, which will draw more than two billion television viewers.

Legacy

The legacy of the World Cup is what is potentially more important. Take those trips to India and Ireland, for instance. They were as much about promoting business as flogging the World Cup.

Already Jamaica's largest mobile telephone service provider, Digicel, is Irish-owned and the Irish team will play in the island in the preliminary round. And it will happen around the period when the Irish celebrate St. Patrick's Day. Jamaica hopes to make them feel welcome with 'Jampatrick's Day, having fun and talking business at the same time.

"While cricket is playing, we want to show the world that today's Jamaica is open for business," he said.

For Walsh, it would all help if the West Indies became the first hosts to the win the World Cup - a seeming improbability given the performance of the team in recent years. He, nonetheless gives the team a decent chance, and not only out of sentiment.

"The way the team is peaking now, they have a good chance," Walsh said. "As West Indians, we have to rally behind the team. I know how I used to feel when playing at home and there was that support."

business@gleanerjm.com