Kensington Oval almost ready for T20 World Cup handover

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC):

BARBADOS IS poised to hand over Kensington Oval ahead of schedule, as the country accelerates its preparation to host nine matches – including the final – of this year’s ICC T20 World Cup.

Ambassador Noel Lynch, chairman of the National Organising Committee, told a media conference on Monday that the major elements of the storied venue would be delivered to tournament authorities next week while the remaining elements would be completed by month end.

“As we speak today, we’re 80 days away from the final in Barbados. We’re also seven days away from the partial handover of Kensington Oval,” said Lynch, a former Cabinet minister who until recently served as ambassador to the United States and the Organization of American States (OAS).

“In seven days, we’ll hand over Kensington Oval to the CWI or to the ICC – these are the main elements of Kensington Oval as we know it.

“On the eastern concourse where there’s the party stand and the temporary facility, and all of those facilities that are coming in, we are sure that we’ll hand over those on the 30th of April.

“But we’ll hand over the major parts that you know – the 3Ws, the Greenidge and Haynes, the Media Centre, the field of play, the scoreboards, all of the electronic boards – will be finished within a week and handed over.

“I think that’s ahead of schedule. I think Barbados has done an exceptional job. It wasn’t my job … when I came back from the US, we were already very far advanced in terms of the progress – the infrastructural progress at Kensington Oval.”

Barbados will host nine matches – five in the group stage, three in the Super Eight second stage, and the final on June 29, which will mark the third such ICC marquee game to be staged at the venue following on from the historic One-Day International World Cup in 2007 and the 2010 T20 World Cup.

West Indies will not feature in any group stage games at the Oval but a box office fixture between reigning T20 World champions England and Australia is on the cards for June 8.

Lynch said it was important Barbadians were not marginalised during the tournament, and stressed that every effort would be made to ensure citizens had access to tickets.

“People in Barbados know about cricket and they should not be disadvantaged in terms of coming into the stadium, so therefore the ticket situation is one that must be fixed,” Lynch pointed out.

“Barbadians understand manual box offices. The fellow that [does not have a] smartphone, is aged out or timed out or scienced out or technologically out, must still believe that he or she has access to Kensington Oval to watch these matches.”

Lynch said a T20 World Cup smartphone app would be released within the next week which would allow fans to access tournament information, ranging from hotels bookings to ticket purchases.

He said this would bring the NOC operations “more into the mode of technology”.

“Everything we’ve done in this World Cup since we took over this role is led by data and data analytics,” he noted.

“We do not guess at what we do, there’s no gut feeling in this. Everything that we do is driven by data.”

The T20 World Cup, jointly hosted by West Indies and United States, will bowl off on June 1.