Why the criticism, Mr Dehring?

THE EDITOR: The recently concluded Test series between the West Indies and Zimbabwe in Zimbabwe has once again afforded cricket fans in the Caribbean the opportunity to see the sort of cricket grounds that exist in that country and to make a comparison with those here in the West Indies. There is no doubt at all, on the evidence of the television, that our top grounds are far superior to those in Zimbabwe.

During the 2003 Cricket World Cup three games were scheduled to be played on each of the two grounds in Zimbabwe, the very grounds that the recent Test series were played on. One therefore assumes that the grounds were inspected by professional development master planners and found to be in keeping with the strict ICC standards that Mr Chris Dehring talks so much about. And if that is so then all the leading cricket grounds in the Caribbean would quite easily qualify to host World Cup matches. Perhaps it would be useful, at this stage, to provide an extract of what was said about the ground that appeared in one of our local newspapers just before the commencement of the 2003 World Cup: “much of the ground is largely undeveloped with grass banks sufficing for grandstand seating around much of the boundary.”

Now if such a ground as we saw on television, or we have just read about, qualifies to host World Cup matches why has Mr Dehring been going about these past few months publicly making adverse comments about our grounds, even to the extent of saying that Sabina and Kensington were not fit to hold World Cup matches? Some of the grounds in South Africa itself were very similar to those in Zimbabwe and, as I have mentioned before in a previous letter, during the 1999 World Cup in Great Britain many of the games were played on very ordinary grounds. I am not saying that there cannot be improvements to our grounds. But in the face of what has gone before in previous World cups there is absolutely nothing inferior about our grounds to justify the comments of Mr Dehring. All the inferiority is in our minds.

BERTRAM HARRIS
Belmont