JCA to lose millions

André Lowe, Senior Staff Reporter

The Jamaica Cricket Association (JCA) is set to lose millions in potential revenue, as the Digicel Cricket Series clash between the West Indies and South Africa, which was scheduled for Sabina Park, became the latest victim of the current flare-up of violence in Kingston.

The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) yesterday confirmed that the fifth one-day international (ODI) scheduled for Thursday, June 3; and the first Test that was slated to begin on Thursday, June 10, would, instead be played at Trinidad and Tobago's Queen's Park Oval.

JCA president Paul Campbell remained tight-lipped about the exact figures, but was obviously disappointed when contacted by The Gleaner yesterday. Campbell explained that the JCA was set to earn millions of dollars from the two international fixtures and that a considerable sum had already been spent over the last six weeks to get the venue in a state of readiness in anticipation of the assignments.

"I wouldn't want to quantify that (losses) at this point. I don't want to get specific, but I can only say that we have lost millions of dollars," Campbell lamented.

"We are obviously very disappointed with the turn of events," said Campbell. "The international series is one of those events that normally provides great benefits to the cricket fraternity and also to Jamaica as a whole.

"From a revenue standpoint, it's significant revenue for our coffers, and so any loss in that would have meant disappointment on our part and also in other areas of our local programme, but that's something that we will have to manage."

Significant sums

Campbell informed that in addition to preparing the venue over the last few weeks, his organisation had already committed significant sums towards the booking of hotel rooms and other services for players and officials and will now be forced to shell out sums in cancellation fees and so on.

Despite not spending the $30 million it would normally cost to stage an event of the magnitude of the ODI and Test fixtures, Campbell pointed out that a lot had been done up to this point.

"A whole lot of work has already been done," Campbell shared. "We are just a few days away from the event, so we would have just been fine-tuning at this point in time.

"The preparation of the facilities had started some six weeks ago or more and in terms of bookings of hotel rooms and service providers, we had already gone through all of that," Campbell continued. "We also secured permits and insurance, so we were well advanced in our preparation: it was just a matter of fine-tuning."

He added: "We would not have gone to that (spent $30 million towards preparation) but there are obviously some penalties that will be incurred because of cancellations and so forth."