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Existing venues need to be upgraded and new ones built and supporting infrastructure has to be put in place in time for cricket’s ninth World Cup, to be staged for the first time in the West Indies in 2007, West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) marketing director Chris Dehring said here yesterday.

Dehring said the tournament would be “the biggest event we’ve ever hosted in the Caribbean” with the possibility of an increase of teams to 16 and the influx of fans from all over the world in their thousands.”

He estimated what he termed “the economic windfall” – from ticket sales, sponsorship, broadcasting rights, concessions, merchandising and tourism – as high as US$500 million.

Although still seven years away, Dehring said planning had been in progress for some time. But he warned: “It could be the best thing that has happened to the Caribbean or the most embarrassing.”

In England throughout the recent 1999 tournament, Dehring observed first hand the organisation and planning, especially “all the background that surrounds it as a commercial and logistical exercise''.

He rated the present grounds in the Caribbean, with the possible exception of the brand new facility in Grenada, as “inadequate in terms of the quantity and quality of seating and support facilities such as concessions”.

Increase in seating

Dehring advised an increase in the capacity of major venues to between 20 000 and 25 000. At present, the Queen’s Park Oval, at 28 000, is the only one capable of accommodating more than 15000.

He referred to the “complete lack of parking space” at Sabina Park, Jamaica, to the “hodge-podge of stands” at Kensington Oval, Barbados, and to the deficiencies in areas such as catering and toilet facilities at most other venues.

“These kinds of grounds are not going to make it easy for us to hold events of this magnitude,” he said. “We’re going to have to look at some serious reconstruction and possibly several new stadiums.''

New venues

According to him, a couple of new cricket venues were being developed in the eastern Caribbean and “possibly” in Jamaica. Dehring said he would be disappointed if the West Indies World Cup did not quadruple the number of tourists who came to England for the recent tournament. But he also recognised the difficulty in not only accommodating them in the stadiums but housing them in hotels and guest houses that are in short supply in some territories and transporting them from territory to territory.

Private help

The “one basic element” learned from the organisation in England, Dehring noted, was that much of the work was assigned to private enterprise where there are experts in the field. “It’s a massive undertaking and it’s better to hire professionals who can handle it,” he pointed out, acknowledging that it would be a “tough principle to sell”.

“I still hear people talking about ‘our World Cup’ and what we’re going to do with ‘our World Cup’,”he said. “It’s not ‘our World Cup’, it’s the World Cup held in the West Indies that we are organising on behalf of the International Cricket Council.”

As a guest on a call-in radio programme in Barbados, he was amused by the suggestion that the World Cup in the West Indies should be limited to eight teams so it could be more easily handled.

“You couldn’t hold the Olympics and run the 100 metres over 99 metres because it suited you better,” Dehring said. “We can’t think like Third World people because this is not a Third World event.”

He pointed out that some professional expertise, such as match management and security, would have to be imported from outside the area, just as television production has been for the past ten years.

The WICB had already given CARICOM governments a “broad overview” of what would be needed to host a World Cup.

“We’ll be meeting with the governments again next month to give them an update on the kind of structure we’re putting in place to manage the event and outlining the type of financial support we hope to receive,” he said.