The ICC Men’s T20 Crick­et World Cup 2024 Bill was pro­posed by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al (AG) Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, in the Sen­ate on Tues­day to en­sure that the tour­na­ment is run ef­fi­cient­ly.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing that over two bil­lion peo­ple will be con­sum­ing this tour­na­ment vir­tu­al­ly, the AG is adamant that things flow smooth­ly when the tour­na­ment be­gins on the grass in the West In­dies and the USA from June 1 to 29.

“We have been co­or­di­nat­ing around the clock to meet cer­tain dead­lines that were agreed up­on by the Cari­com host coun­tries and the ICC to man­age what is un­doubt­ed­ly an event of great mag­ni­tude and huge view­er­ship.”

In the Caribbean, Trinidad and To­ba­go, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Bar­ba­dos and Guyana will all host match­es.

The AG as­sured that na­tion­al and Cari­com-wide in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al meet­ings have been held with at­tor­neys gen­er­al, min­is­ters of le­gal af­fairs, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, law en­force­ment heads, and chiefs of im­mi­gra­tion from all host coun­tries to suc­cess­ful­ly fa­cil­i­tate the host­ing of the show­case event.

“These co­or­di­na­tion ef­forts in­clude many long days and nights by key lo­cal, re­gion­al, and in­ter­na­tion­al of­fi­cials who have been try­ing to meet the short dead­lines,” AG Ar­mour said.

How­ev­er, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Sen­a­tor Anil Roberts had a dif­fer­ent out­look on the fix­ture al­lo­ca­tion, as he be­lieves T&T got the short end of the stick in re­la­tion to its re­gion­al neigh­bours. While in agree­ment that the World Cup will be viewed by over two bil­lion peo­ple world­wide, Roberts re­mains scep­ti­cal over how many view­ers will tune in­to the match­es host­ed lo­cal­ly.

“They will cer­tain­ly not be watch­ing Afghanistan play Papua New Guinea in the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um,” Roberts said dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion in the Sen­ate on Tues­day evening.

Roberts, who thanked Ar­mour for apol­o­gis­ing for the late­ness of the doc­u­ments to pass this bill, is con­cerned that a bill sim­i­lar to 2007 is be­ing used as a guide giv­en pre­vi­ous cul­tur­al

Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne dis­agreed with that no­tion, re­mind­ing the pub­lic that T&T has long held the rep­u­ta­tion of be­ing an ex­cel­lent host and con­ven­er of re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al events.

“This coun­try has dis­tin­guished it­self and it should give us op­ti­mism. We have host­ed ma­jor events both re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. About crick­et, we have host­ed ma­jor match­es, events, and tour­na­ments in this coun­try. So where is all this neg­a­tiv­i­ty com­ing from?”

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Suni­ty Ma­haraj not­ed that the re­cent Cari­com Crick­et Con­fer­ence high­light­ed key gov­er­nance is­sues in the lo­cal crick­et sphere and en­cour­aged the Gov­ern­ment to find ways to en­sure prop­er con­duct.

“The time has come to re­al­ly look at the leg­isla­tive frame­work on which these bod­ies op­er­ate and to en­sure that en­ti­ties that re­ceive State pub­lic funds com­ply with ac­count­abil­i­ty stan­dards, trans­paren­cy stan­dards, and democ­ra­cy stan­dards,” Ma­haraj said.

Sen­a­tor Ma­haraj sug­gest­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go look in­to a ‘Ma­jor Events Bill’ to avoid a case-by-case ap­pli­ca­tion when events of such stature re­oc­cur.

From June 12–14, Trinidad and To­ba­go will host the West In­dies ver­sus New Zealand, Afghanistan ver­sus Papua New Guinea and New Zealand ver­sus Ugan­da, New Zealand ver­sus Papua New Guinea on June 17, and Se­mi-fi­nal Two on June 27 at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my.

The Queen’s Park Oval, Sir Frank Wor­rell Memo­r­i­al Ground at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies in St Au­gus­tine, and Diego Mar­tin Sport­ing Com­plex will be used for prac­tice match­es.