Dear Editor,

How much exposure did St Lucia, Antigua, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and St Kitts and Nevis, all world-class and hugely popular tourist venues in the Caribbean, reap from hosting the games in the 2024 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup? How much more value has Barbados reaped from hosting its quota of games and the grand final of the tournament?

Some of us can only speculate on the amount of money these islands would have needed to fork out to finance this level of exposure as displayed by the huge and enthusiastic multi-national and multi-cultural crowds that participated. Add to that the constant television cutaways showing idyllic tropical scenes across those Caribbean venues.

The short-sightedness, some say callous disregard for cricket loving Jamaicans, shown by the Jamaican Government in not bidding to host cricket World Cup matches in Jamaica has been voiced relentlessly across social and mass media. The Sports Minister Olivia Grange spoke to how much it would have cost the Jamaican economy to host games in the tournament and that the miniscule budget allocated to sports has to be spread around all of the other sports. Okay. But Puma already sponsors Jamaica’s track and field teams, and adidas wants an opportunity to replace them with an even bigger package. Also, adidas sponsors the national football teams.

Apart from some local entities that can only offer peanuts compared to those global sporting giants, who sponsors cricket? In relative terms, the International Cricket Council (ICC) does as much as FIFA and World Athletics for its sport. And so we would ask Sports Minister Grange how much has the Barbados tourism lost as a result of its Government’s decision to sponsor the 2024 ICC Men’s World Cup in the massive way it did?

The unfortunate part is that sports was not the only sector hurt by this Government’s decision. We believe the tourism product lost a huge opportunity as well to reach a massive global audience.

Thank God Jamaica is not an authoritarian society and when politicians make far-reaching decisions without consulting the citizens that they are elected to represent, the citizens ultimately have the last word.

H St A Morrison

hmorrison@cwjamaica.com