Even as cricket stakeholders want to host local and international matches at the Trelawny Multipurpose Stadium, the venue’s future could be determined by whether Government is successful in forging a public-private partnership to manage the facility.

The 25,000-seater stadium in Florence Hall, located just outside Falmouth on Jamaica’s scenic north-western coast, was built in time for the region’s staging of the 2007 ICC World Cup. But the facility, managed by the state-run Independence Park Limited (IPL), has since hosted only a handful of international women’s cricket matches and a few first-class fixtures.

Jamaica hosted a regional four-day cricket match at the venue in 2009 before another two followed in early 2020.

In the summer of 2021 the Pakistan cricket team used the venue to prepare for a two-Test series at Sabina Park in Kingston.

Earlier this month the stadium hosted two quarter-final matches in the Jamaica Cricket Association’s (JCA’s) premier Twenty20 competition.

But IPL General Manager Major Desmon Brown, who noted that a prior plan to have the facility transformed into a sports tourism and training centre was scrapped due to lack of funding, said the Development Bank of Jamaica is making arrangement to lure private sector investment.

“The decision the Government has taken [is] to seek private partnership to develop the place,” he told the Jamaica Observer on Wednesday.

“We don’t know what would happen to the facility [but] we are really hoping it would be [used for] sports. But he who has the gold makes the rules, so we can’t say whether or not it includes that [light installation], but the development bank is putting together documents to private sector people to see if we can find an interested party,” Brown explained.

JCA Chief Executive Officer Courtney Francis told the Observer the venue is a big part of the association’s plans.

“The Trelawny Multipurpose Stadium is very much on our radar. We have two [first-class] cricket venues in the country — the other is obviously Sabina Park — and we try to ensure we utilise both of them.

“The last time we had regional first-class cricket in Jamaica we had five rounds of cricket and two of those were played in Trelawny and the other three at Sabina Park. As we speak, I am not sure what the next four-day competition will be like — whether it will be five rounds or 10 rounds as yet, and I don’t know if Jamaica will host any matches,” he said.

“We keep in touch with Independence Park Limited, the entity in charge of the stadium, and the Trelawny Cricket Association. It is not far-fetched that, maybe in a couple of years, Jamaica could host a leg of the regional Super50 tournament since we have two venues of international standard,” Francis added.

Trelawny Cricket Association President Chester Anderson said the multipurpose stadium has effectively become the parish team’s base and has also been central to grass-roots programmes.

“This is the home of Trelawny cricket; we are allowed to utilise it in any way possible as it relates to cricket. We don’t only play games there; we also use it for training and we have even been able to bring out the youngsters for cricket camps there,” he told the Observer.

“We help to ensure the stadium is maintained in a proper way and that people don’t come around to vandalise it and all of that. We definitely want to have more of these [regional and international] matches to continue the effective utilisation of the stadium and for further development in terms of the facilities,” Anderson said.

The Trelawny cricket boss added that at least two upgrades would make the venue an even more attractive option for hosting big-ticket matches.

“We really would want [the installation of] lights that would allow us to host night games and we’d also want to have an electronic scoreboard. We want to have the stadium properly utilised — we could have more international games in Trelawny and it would generate a lot of interest this side of Jamaica,” he said.

But Major Brown reiterated that ultimately the potential public-private partnership will dictate which purposes the facility will serve.

“If a private sector entity is putting in money they have to make returns, so they have to put in what they feel they can make a return on,” the IPL general manager said.