ATISHAI Mansingh, director and co-founder of Cricket Cave, says his organisation is on a mission to revitalise cricket in Jamaica through facility development and fan engagement.

On one hand, he wants the transformation of the indoor practice nets at the famous Sabina Park in Kingston to first class standards. But in the immediate, Mansingh pointed to the setting up a Fan Zone in the North Lounge at Sabina Park for the three-match West Indies-South Africa Twenty20 International series from May 23-26.

He said Fan Zone ticket holders will have access to comfortable amenities, including a designated parking place, a bar, diverse food vendors, music, and domino tables.

“We’re taking over the indoor nets at Sabina Park and creating it into a first class, international standard facility. Lighting, a lounge area, we’ll have a youth academy and everything to bring back an area where, in day or night-time, people can come and play cricket,” Mansingh told the Jamaica Observer.

“So what we’re doing is, Cricket Cave in general, we’re looking to redefine cricket in Jamaica.

“But what we’re doing is to kind of also bring back awareness that cricket is still alive. For the South Africa series — in the North Stand itself — we’re creating a Fan Zone but what that basically means is, we’re making it comfortable for people to come back to cricket.

“Just to incite people to say, ‘You know, a long time I don’t go cricket, let me go see what it’s about.’ So the aim is to make it comfortable and fun,” said Mansingh, who added that David Henriques is another Cricket Cave co-founder and fellow director.

Matches in the T20 series are scheduled to be played on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday at Sabina Park.

Fan Zone tickets to the games are already on sale, and interested parties can purchase them at tickets.windiescricket.com.

Mansingh said that the overall goal of the initiatives is to counter the absence of major cricket events in Jamaica in recent years.

Though the ICC T20 World Cup is to be hosted by the Caribbean and the United States in June, Jamaica did not bid to stage any match. The country last hosted international cricket in 2022 and has not staged a Caribbean Premier League (CPL) match since 2019.

“We don’t have any World Cup tournaments so let’s give them a reason to now get interested,” he said.

“That’s really the gist of it right now. We want to continue to get more and more cricket in Jamaica, and more and more people involved. We have not had much international cricket at the moment and no CPL or anything. We’re looking just to make a positive change across all levels to ensure that more and more cricketers play there,” Mansingh added.