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The Jamaica
Local Organising Committee (LOC) is reporting that
it has reached full agreements with all the owners
of facilities to be used as practice venues during
the Cricket World Cup 2007 (CWC) 2007. The venues
include Chedwin Park in St. Catherine, Kensington
Park in Kingston, Kaiser Sports Club in St. Ann
and Jarrett Park in St. James.
This
disclosure was made by Robert Bryan, Executive Director
of the Jamaica LOC, at a press briefing held at
the offices of Jamaica Promotions Corporation (JAMPRO)
in Kingston on November 25.
He
informed that the work to upgrade the facilities
was scheduled to commence shortly, in order to meet
the required standard in the stipulated time period.
This comes as good news, because the ICC CWC 2007,
Venue Director, Don Lockerbie has expressed concern
about the state of readiness of practice pitches
in Jamaica as well as in the other host countries
for the event.
"Right
now, just to be clear, we have made a very strict
demand on all LOCs and here in Jamaica, specifically
on the two stadiums, that we need to have pitches
that can perform," he emphasised at a press
conference after an inspection of the multipurpose
stadium in Trelawny by ICC Officials and stakeholders.
"We
have been told by the experts that they are pretty
pleased right now with the pitch squares, but most
of the outfields need a lot of work," Mr. Lockerbie
added.
He
attributed the problem to the fact that the LOCs
have been mostly focused on building the "fabulous
monuments" that the region has as stadia, in
order to host some 51 matches and 16 warm up matches
during the Cricket World Cup.
Commenting
further on the necessity of having good practice
venues, the Venue Director explained that more than
750 training sessions were pre-arranged by the Cricket
Operations team.
"So
when you think about the two months that players
are here in the region, and the ones who make the
finals in 11 matches. they will train some part
of 25 to 40 times and that is an enormous amount
of wear and tear on the facilities that have had
trouble just being first class grounds in general,"
he said. There are 22 such venues to be used in
the ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 and this is in addition
to 12 new stadia.
"We
are really going to have to focus on making sure
that these heavily used training grounds are not
only operating well and performing well, but are
special places in their own right," Mr. Lockerbie
stressed.
Agreements
have been reached and executed for the other critical
sites for the venue operation at Sabina Park. These
include Emmett Park, the Holy Trinity School grounds
and the lands to locate the search park on South
Camp Road. The LOC will take possession of Emmett
Park on December 1.
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