Unlocking Financial Benefits of Barbados' Investments in Kensington Oval for ICC Cricket World Cup Success

Barbadians must stop being “meek and mild and peaceful and polite” if they want their country to really reap the financial sweets from investments made in preparation for hosting International Cricket Council (ICC) Cricket World Cups (CWCs).

Central to this effort should be fully exploiting the benefit of the millions of dollars invested in the “iconic” Kensington Oval, says Chris de Caires, who chaired Cricket World Cup Barbados Inc., the local organising committee of CWC 2007.

The business executive, who has chaired the Barbados Private Sector Association and the Barbados Tourism Investment Inc., believed Barbados had been “too laid back” in seeking to make the most of Government’s estimated near $160 million investment in the redevelopment of Kensington Oval for CWC 2007.

With the current administration having borrowed $50 million from the African Export-Import Bank to renovate Kensington Oval before CWC T20 2024 in June, de Caires said: “Hopefully, now that we are on this track of the second or third major event there, we can see it as something that we need to promote on a more positive basis going forward.”

“Kensington Oval is iconic, the investment that was put into it was very significant back in 2007 and it’s nice to see them refreshing it because a stadium like that does cost money to maintain. It is a first-class stadium, but we have used it for events that are perhaps not as major as we would have liked to make it really pay for itself,” he stated.

“If there is one area that we tend to lack in the Caribbean, it is the marketing of what we have. In terms of promoting it and using it to its full extent, we tend to be a little bit more laid back than we perhaps should be in terms of getting the most out of our investments. It does take a lot of energy and a lot of running around and, to some extent, our culture is not one of self-promotion, which is part of the issue.”

His observation was that “we want to be meek and mild and peaceful and polite. That is a response you often get, but we need to be a little bit more proactive in going off to big events to get them here, which usually means you have to promise things that you don’t always know how to deliver, but we need to get the confidence to be able to do that so that [Kensington Oval] can be used to full effect”.

He believed that Barbados benefited economically when it hosted CWC 2007, including via increased tourist arrivals, and the fact that some businesses had their best years financially in 2007.