Watch West Indies cricketers ’live’ on TTT

CRICKET fans in Trinidad and Tobago will be afforded the opportunity to see the West Indies stars in action “live” after all during their tour of Southern Africa currently underway.

After weeks of uncertainty it was announced yesterday that an agreement has been reached which would allow Trinidad and Tobago Television (TTT) on Channels 2 and 13 to telecast “live” the six Tests and ten One-day Internationals from Zimbabwe and South Africa. It will cost the Government owned NBN, parent company of TTT, about US $170,000 for the package offered by Jamaica-based cable company Sports Max, who held the exclusive television  rights for the tour. Yesterday, Anthony Harford, managing-director of All Sport Promotions and local representative of Sports Max said the impetus to have the deal delivered was triggered by the initiative of insurance giants CLICO. On Thursday top CLICO officials comprising Claudius Dacon (Chief Executive Officer), Ian Garcia (vice-president marketing), and Russell Teshiera (vice president, sales and Agencies Administration) had put up US $60,000 to cover 35 per-cent of the overall cost of the television rights. Closing the negotiations yesterday at 4 pm with Sports Max representative Harford was acting chief Executive officer of NBN, Dominic Beaubrun.

Harford explained yesterday that although NBN came out the winner yesterday ahead of Caribbean Comminications Network’s TV6, it was not a bidding war but that TTT showed a greater commitment to bringing the exploits of the young West Indies players into the local living rooms. He said although there was a concern that private business houses were not too keen on buying television advertisements to enable TTT to cover the cost of the rights, he was optimistic that they would warm to the latest development. “Only today (Friday) my office had calls from at least three accompanies who were seriously interested in getting into the act. NBN now have a duty to sell the air time,” said Harford. The First Test against Zimbabwe starts on Tuesday and the Southern African cricket safari comes to an end on February 4.