No World Cup cricket for new Marabella venue

There will be no World Cup cricket matches at the government’s proposed site at Marabella. This according to a reliable cricket source yesterday. “There will be World Cup matches only at the Oval as far as Trinidad and Tobago are concerned. However there will be warm-up matches at the National Cricket Centre in Balmain and Shaw Park in Tobago.” The Cricket World Cup Venue Assessment team will be in Trinidad on Thursday to hold talks with four groups and visit the Queen’s Park Oval in Port-of-Spain where matches will be played. The 13-member team headed by managing-director of the 2007 World Cup, Chris Dehring and the International Cricket Council’s Don Lookaby will spend one day in the country.

The team will split into four groups to meet with the government, one with the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board of Control (TTCBC), another with the Local Bid Committee and one with Queen’s Park Cricket Club. The source continued: “All this talk about the government building a stadium at Marabella for World Cup cricket seems to be just that, talk. There wouldn’t even be any warm-up matches at the venue.” Trinidad and Tobago have sent in a bid for six preliminary matches, the opening ceremony and one semi-final.

After the assessment team visits Trinidad on Thursday they will take two months to review what they have seen. The announcement of which countries have been selected will be made on July 4 in London, while the award of matches will be revealed on July 13 at a ceremony in Montego Bay, Jamaica. The ICC CWC WI 2007 Inc indicated that 11 countries submitted bids to host the 2007 World Cup events. They are Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Bermuda, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, St Kitts/Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago and the United States.