Latest update April 23rd, 2024 12:59 AM
May 05, 2016 Sports
By Sean Devers
According Dr. Rupert Roopnarine the Education Minister, who holds the responsibility for Sport, Guyana
will no longer host the ‘finals’ of this year’s Hero Caribbean Premier League (CPL) T20 cricket tournament which commences in St Kitts on June 21st with the Guyana Amazon Warriors facing St Kitts & Nevis Patriots.
At yesterday’s sitting of Parliament, Finance Minister Winston Jordan also confirmed that this country had lost out to Trinidad who has hosted the finals twice in the three history of the tournament.
The Government was willing to pay US$1.5 million for the finals but Trinidad’s bid was higher after their Government had paid US$3.5 for last year’s final.
Alfred King, the Permanent Secretary in Sports Ministry, disclosed that the government’s intention was to enhance what the CPL offered to their fans in the ‘biggest Party in sports’ by putting up prizes for trips to Kaieteur Falls and sell Jubilee Independence paraphernalia among other things to tie into Guyana’s 50th Anniversary celebrations.
“The CPL made a bid we reviewed it in Cabinet…we were to review it again and then we heard that Trinidad outbid us. Of course there will be a degree of disappointment that we are not hosting the finals…We don’t have the reserves of Trinidad first of all and Trinidad would have always been an attractive venue,” said Jordan. The CPL’s initially asked for US$4.5 which was reportedly reduced to US$2million.
Jordon explained that a number of factors worked against Guyana ‘beating’ T&T bid. These included the strength of the home team, adding that several Trinidad and Tobago players who represented the Guyana Franchise last year including Skipper Denish Ramdin, Lendl Simmons and Sunil Narine, had returned to their country.
The fan base in Trinidad are expected to come out in massive numbers since expectations of the home Franchise is very strong and them reaching the Finals are very likely.
In addition to Trinidad being dubbed the party capital of the world and likely to attract more visitors in August when the finals are fixed for, when May would have been the ideal time to host the CPL with thousands of overseas Guyanese and others already booked to travel to Guyana for the 50th Anniversary events.
“We could only go so far with what we have…when we look at the circumstances and so on we would not have been able to afford it…As prices went down the other side probably went up,” the Minister stated.
Strengthening Trinidad’s willingness to reportedly pay US$1 million more than Guyana’s bid was the proposal outlined to all governments that a total of 93,929 fans attended the matches in Trinidad and as a result 551 jobs were created.
In addition, a television audience of 27.3 million persons viewed the games, and a total of 5,703 nights were spent by non-local spectators at the hotels in Trinidad.
The total direct impact of the 2015 tournament for the T&T economy was stated as US$15.40 million. This was broken down into the direct spending by CPL which was US$3.84 million, accommodation and general expenditure was listed at US$5.63 million, and value produced by the T&T Tourist Board branding at matches was put at US$5.93 million.
It was reported that the date set for making public the hosts for the semi-finals and finals was April 30.
It is understood that the failure by the Guyana Government to give a firm commitment by last Saturday could see Guyana being denied matches in the Group stages, scheduled for Providence.
The CPL will be played in Florida for the first time and the Guyana Amazon Warriors will play two of their games in North America including the opening game against the Barbados Tridents on July 28 at the Central Broward Regional Park Stadium before facing the Tridents again on July 30 at the same venue.
There were mixed emotions from the fans about Guyana not hosting the finals but many Guyanese also feel that to pay such a huge some to host four days of CPL cricket was too much and money would be better spent on upgrading local sports facilities and ensuing that the various sporting Associations have adequate funding to get overseas exposure.
According to an executive of the GCB, the Board receives no subvention from Government to help in the development of Guyana’s cricket and depends on the WICB for funding.
LISTEN HOW JAGDEO WILL MAKE ALL GUYANESE RICH!!!
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