West In­dies crick­et on the field and at the ad­min­is­tra­tive lev­el re­gard­ing the joint host­ing of the ICC T20 World Cup will be on dis­play to the world in a few days. Un­der­stand­ably, the most im­por­tant and self-ful­fill­ing ob­jec­tive of this tour­na­ment is the quest to re-es­tab­lish our team as amongst the best in the world, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly won two ti­tles, and as a re­gion with a record sec­ond to none on the play­ing field in all of the for­mats of the game.

How we plan for and ad­min­is­ter the game off the field will be a ma­jor fo­cus. The lat­ter as­pect is sure­ly go­ing to be a source for in­ves­ti­gat­ing and re­port­ing, es­pe­cial­ly by the for­eign me­dia who will be here to cov­er the games in the re­gion and as they are played on Amer­i­can soil. When our team and mem­bers play be­neath their demon­strat­ed ca­pac­i­ty, we as West In­di­ans bow our heads and re­mem­ber yes­ter­year crick­eters and teams in all of the for­mats of the game. More so that we have grown ac­cus­tomed to the poor qual­i­ty per­for­mances of our teams of re­cent vin­tage. How­ev­er, if our ad­min­is­tra­tion falls down on its host­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, that is al­to­geth­er a dif­fer­ent mat­ter.

Why so? Be­cause such will be a crit­i­cism of our civil­i­sa­tion. If we are found guilty of ad­min­is­ter­ing the tour­na­ment in a man­ner, not nec­es­sar­i­ly free from crit­i­cism, as such a phe­nom­e­non is part and par­cel of host­ing such ma­jor sport­ing events for any coun­try, but in a way that dis­rupts games, makes it im­pos­si­ble for high-qual­i­ty crick­et to be played and de­stroys the chances of teams play­ing for their coun­tries to do so on an equal ba­sis, that is a very dif­fer­ent mat­ter. If we can be fault­ed on sig­nif­i­cant as­pects of ad­min­is­ter­ing the tour­na­ment, then we should be right­ly called out for our short­com­ings.

Crick­et West In­dies pres­i­dent Dr Kishore Shal­low and his team of or­gan­is­ers re­spon­si­ble for the plan­ning and ad­min­is­tra­tion work, must en­sure every dress­ing room, pitch and fence around every ground where the crick­et is to be played are all in the re­quired or­der de­mand­ed by the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil. They have a few days left to check and dou­ble-check and check again; they should leave no dis­trac­tion from what is hap­pen­ing on the pitch of play.

They must al­so be ful­ly con­scious that there will be those in the in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia who will be look­ing for every in­stance which can be blamed on Crick­et West In­dies; maybe the same goes for every host­ing na­tion. We, how­ev­er, must be con­scious of rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age done not mere­ly to the ad­min­is­tra­tors but every West In­di­an any­where and so to the ca­pac­i­ty of the re­gion to host an in­ter­na­tion­al event as large as the T20 World Cup.

To all of us as cit­i­zens of the West In­dies, we must ap­pre­ci­ate and car­ry out our re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as the host na­tion and its peo­ple and we do so not on­ly in the in­ter­est of be­ing ef­fi­cient and cre­ative or­gan­is­ers of a game in which we have fea­tured promi­nent­ly for near­ly 100 years, but al­so to avoid the wag­ging tongues of those who do not have our best in­ter­est at heart. Let the games be­gin! And best of luck to skip­per Rov­man Pow­ell and his team.