DISTRACTED by Christmas and new year festivities, even some of our more ardent sports fans would have missed news about a youth cricket tournament on Jamaica’s north coast in late December.

Six teams, three comprising some of Jamaica’s more talented teenage cricketers, and three academy teams from the United States with youngsters of a comparable age , took part.

Matches were played at Port Rhoades Sports Club and Reynolds (Jamaica Bauxite Mining) Cricket Ground in St Ann and the Trelawny Multipurpose Stadium, at Florence Hall overlooking Falmouth.

Two Jamaican teams, designated Jamaica Gold and Jamaica Black, eventually reached the championship match, with the former winning by 21 runs.

But as Mr O’neil Cruickshank, cricket operations and development manager at Jamaica Cricket Association (JCA), told this newspaper, the tournament was far more about development for the young cricketers than actual match results.

For the young Jamaicans, the tournament was a rare chance to meet overseas opponents in a competitive environment. For the young Americans, mostly of East Indian ancestry, it provided an opportunity to play on natural turf pitches, rather than the artificial surfaces to which they are accustomed.

Also, perhaps, it provided the visitors with stronger opposition than they had consistently faced previously.

During the tournament Mr Cruickshank declared that the signs were good for continuation, perhaps even expansion, in the years to come.

“We have been getting interest from academies, people asking how we could make arrangements. … What I’m seeing is that Jamaica youth versus US youth is going to be a thing of the future,” he said.

In recent times a few Jamaican school teams have also been visiting the United States to play cricket. In fact, as Mr Cruishank reminds us, cricket in the United States — the world’s largest economy — is “mushrooming”.

That growth is being driven by prosperous, cricket-loving Asian migrants — mostly Indians. Hence the strong presence of that ethnic group in representative US cricket teams.

The USA’s co-hosting of the 2024 Twenty20 Cricket World Cup, alongside the Caribbean, and their commendable showing in that tournament would have further boosted interest there.

Jamaica, situated on the ‘doorstep’ of America, is ideally positioned to benefit from this fast-moving expansion of US cricket. The recent north coast youth tournament gave just a hint of what’s possible, going forward, in terms of sports tourism.

That’s one reason this newspaper, among other observers, was so appalled by the Jamaican Government’s decision to decline hosting rights for last year’s Twenty20 Cricket World Cup.

That’s gone, but glorious opportunities remain. The Government, in tandem with JCA, should be eagerly eyeing the possibilities and moving to take advantage.

Readers may recall that the under-used Trelawny Multipurpose Stadium was first built with an eye to the 2007 50-over Cricket World Cup as well as sports tourism.

Last June, Sports Minister Ms Olivia Grange told Parliament of a proposal driven by private interests for a US$550-million transformation of the Trelawny stadium into a high-performance sports complex. Part of that sports tourism proposal, Ms Grange said at the time, was for “high-rise condominiums and a hotel”.

We believe it is past time Jamaicans heard more about that proposal.