KINGSTOWN, St Vincent, CMC – Organisers of the ICC Men’s Twenty20 World Cup matches in St Vincent & the Grenadines gave the assurance this week that they are “on target” to meet the deadline of June 1 to hand over venues for the global showpiece.
SVG will be staging matches in Group D of the tournament that features Bangladesh, Nepal, The Netherlands, South Africa, and Sri Lanka, as well as Super Eight quarterfinal matches from June 13 at the Arnos Vale Sports Complex.
Former West Indies wicketkeeper-batsman Mike Findlay, a member of the SVG local organising committee, said there have been a few delays with shipping of important equipment, but they were confident of delivering on time.
“Although the matches don’t start here until June 13, we’ve got to hand over the playing field to the [ICC] sometime before that and we think we are well on track to do so,” Findlay said during a news conference.
“It requires a lot of work, we’ve got a lot of contractors on the ground, and they’re working independently, so we’re not dependent on one single contractor to do it.”
He added: “It’s costing the government a lot of money – but it’s the price we have to pay to be part of this international event, so that the construction is almost finished, we have had some delays because of one reason or another.
“Because we had to order a lot of equipment, not only the infrastructure for the field itself, but the equipment to maintain the pitches and the outfield.”
SVG, which hosted its first international match 43 years ago, has not been a regular stop on international bilateral tours in the past decade, but the opening of the international airport seven years ago in the eastern community of Argyle and other infrastructural developments positioned the country to take advantage of this opportunity.
Findlay said there are also improvements taking place inside the cricket ground with the installation of a giant replay screen and floodlights for the first time to bring it in line with other facilities around the Caribbean.
“We are glad that we’re having night matches,” he said. “We were hampered before because the E.T. Joshua Airport was just next to the playing field and because of height limitations, we could not have lights.
“At the moment, the lights are here already. The poles are being set in at the moment. We had to do the base before the polls arrived.”
“We are having an electronic scoreboard, but we still have to provide a manual scoreboard, a smaller one, just in case there any technicalities with the electronic scoreboard.”
To this end, an order of standby generators has also arrived in the country to facilitate the new infrastructure at the ground.
“We’re bringing in sufficient generators to run the entire system at Arnos Vale, so that we’re not solely dependent on the power from (local electric company) VINLEC at all,” Findlay said.
The first match in SVG features Bangladesh against The Netherlands on June 13, and the following day will be the first match under light when Nepal face South Africa.
