World Cup 2024: Learning from the past?

The House of Assembly has played its part in ensuring preparations for the 2024 T/20 Cricket World Cup by approving legislation governing arrangements for the tournament, to be played in the Caribbean and the USA in June, at a marathon sitting last week. It was a sitting at which the Opposition gave its full support to the measures contained in the legislation. Given the fractious nature of our parliamentary exchanges, the Opposition should be commended for its cooperation in this regard.

The legislative process was not a particularly singular Vincentian act, for other host territories are similarly bound. It brought back memories of the last time the Caribbean hosted the World Cup, in 2007 when we had our first experience with such legislation. The common Bill, then virtually rushed through the parliaments of nine countries, was called the Sunset legislation, and memories of it have evoked comments that it appears that the drafters may have engaged in more than just a tasting of our own potent Sunset strong rum, in the drafting process.

It appears though that the 2007 experience, by no means a pleasant one, has been taken into consideration in crafting the 2024 version and hopefully the hangover from the 2007 experience would be avoided. In preparing for this article, I decided to revisit some of my own comments on the process of 17 years ago and found some very interesting ones. Let’s look at some of these via “The Eye of the Needle” in April of 2006 and 2007.

On April 7, 2006, one year before the actual tournament, this column began commenting on the preparations for the tournament, then still one year away. Referring to the challenge of hosting “Fifteen national teams, complete with their own armies of fans, media personnel, officials and just plain visitors”, the column noted that, “it will be the region’s ability to organize, administer, host and entertain the expected thousands of guests which will be on show for the world to see”.
This remains as valid in 2024 as it did, 17 years ago.

In this undertaking, the column stated, “the effort has, quite wisely, not been left up to the West Indies Cricket Board alone”. A broader approach of involving Caricom and national governments as well as the private sector was followed, given the investment of hundreds of millions of dollars by both sectors and on this basis local organizing committees were established.

Interestingly, the column attributed the success of the venture in these words, “it all depends on whether WE DO IT RIGHT and place ourselves in a position to benefit from our investment”. It also warned that given the enormity of the challenge that, “this is not a time for our usual negativism…without trying to put forward constructive proposals”. It continued that even “if the governments and the cricket boards are making mistakes, we CANNOT SIT BACK and allow things to fall into disrepair”.

Having mentioned the various challenges, the column raised some very specific questions still relevant to today. In relation to food for instance it asked, “What of feeding the cricket-lovers? Who is offering the incentives to farmers and farmers organizations? What plans are there to assist our food producers (farmers, fisherfolk, agro processors) to ensure that they are in a position to DELIVER and to BENEFIT?

It went on to state that, “We cannot spend public money only for one small group of people to benefit or to encourage a massive importation of food and further undermine our food security”. It is already very late in the process so we can only hope that this challenge is being addressed in the current exercise.

The post-mortem:

The 2007 hosting revealed many disappointments. There was of course, the on-field one, our players failing to capture the prize, but more so a lot of avoidable organizational mishaps. Some of these were attributable to many of the rules and legislation contained in the now-infamous “Sunset Legislation” which this column stated as amounting to “the deculturization of our cricket”.

The influence of the International Cricket Council (ICC) on the legislation enacted was such that it failed to take account of our cricket culture in the Caribbean detailing a set of rules, dos and don’ts, that seemed to eviscerate our cricket culture and resulted in fans, deprived of those very elements which make Caribbean cricket so special, boycotting the games. So grave was the threat that normally complacent Barbados, virtually rebelled faced with huge losses and embarrassment.

Fortunately, based on reports and observations, we appear to have learnt the bitter lessons of our last hosting experience and have been much more assertive so far. If this continues it bodes well for the success of the tournament and the enjoyment of our people. But we must continue to be eternally vigilant and alert.

I conclude by quoting from the April 13, 2007 column of the “Eye of the Needle”, as follows:

“The bitter lesson is that we simply cannot abdicate our responsibility and sign away our birthright, trusting negotiators to deliver for us. The World Cup has taught us this lesson, we must now apply it in other areas including trade negotiations….There must be a constant process of communication, information and consultation to ensure that we are all can be kept abreast and participate”.

Renwick Rose is a community activist and social commentator.