WI to unveil W/C 2007 ticket prices

A news conference in Jamaica has been called to reveal prices and information about when tickets will go on sale.

Cricket World Cup chief executive Chris Dehring said the building of new stadiums and upgrading of related infrastructure was on schedule.

He told the BBC: "Cricket in the Caribbean is a sleeping giant, just waiting to be reawoken." The World Cup, involving 12 teams, will see 51 matches played in a 47-day period from March 13 to April 28 2007. Eight different Caribbean countries will stage matches and initial estimates put potential revenue for the West Indies Cricket Board at over ?54 million.

Dehring said everything possible would be done to make it a memorable experience for travelling supporters. "We are putting in place various mechanisms to make it a little easier for fans to move around the region.

"For instance, we’re working on a one-stop visa to allow fans to be processed once, instead of having to process every time they go through from country to country," he explained.

"There’s a tremendous amount of goodwill by all the various governments. We’ve come together really well on this project, probably more so than at any other time in our history."

Dehring said that although Caribbean people had a reputation for being laid-back, he was "absolutely confident" everything would be ready on time. "A tremendous amount of activity is taking place in the Caribbean. A lot of it may have been planned before but what Cricket World Cup 2007 has done is allow countries to focus on a timeline.

"It has been a really great catalyst for development in the region," he added.