The re­gion­al fer­ry sys­tem cur­rent­ly be­ing worked on will al­so as­sist West In­dies crick­et and fans of the game. This was the view of Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley, as she spoke on day one of the Cari­com Re­gion­al Crick­et Con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

A Crick­et West In­dies of­fi­cial had ear­li­er re­vealed it cost rough­ly US$150,000 for a re­gion­al team to have a camp or at­tend a tour­na­ment in the Caribbean.

Re­spond­ing to a ques­tion dur­ing the pan­el dis­cus­sion, Mot­t­ley tout­ed the on­com­ing re­gion­al fer­ry ser­vice as a pos­si­ble so­lu­tion to such ex­pen­di­ture.

She said, “Re­gion­al trav­el is not just a chal­lenge for crick­et but for all of us. I do be­lieve that the ini­tia­tive that Trinidad, Bar­ba­dos and Guyana are work­ing on with re­gards to a re­gion­al fer­ry sys­tem will al­so help be­cause it’s not on­ly about mov­ing the crick­eters, it’s about mov­ing the fans. Fans cre­ate the base for eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.”

She went fur­ther in say­ing that the CWI had not ne­go­ti­at­ed trav­el across the re­gion in the best pos­si­ble way.

“Part of the dif­fi­cul­ty is that I don’t think we have ne­go­ti­at­ed suf­fi­cient­ly favourable con­tracts with re­gards to ac­cess to trav­el, but it can­not on­ly be air trav­el be­cause that’s not go­ing to be sus­tain­able in terms of the lev­el of base,” she said.

She added, “I hope that in the same way we have con­tracts with ho­tels, et cetera, that with the re­sump­tion of air trav­el now com­ing back to a nor­mal state and with the de­vel­op­ment of the fer­ry trav­el that we hope to bring in­to play that we can have greater ac­cess to the com­mod­i­ty of sports to be de­vel­oped not just of the cost of trav­el for crick­eters but cre­at­ing the fan­base that can trav­el with the crick­et.”

In Feb­ru­ary, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley con­firmed the fer­ry plan was a ma­jor part of Cari­com dis­cus­sions and two oth­er coun­tries are in­ter­est­ed in the ini­tia­tive, apart from Guyana, T&T, St Vin­cent and Bar­ba­dos.

Mean­while, Guyanese Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali al­so chal­lenged the re­gion to “own” crick­et across the Amer­i­c­as.

In a pre-record­ed video, as he was un­able to at­tend due to mat­ters of state in his coun­try, Ali said, “We can­not leave this con­fer­ence with­out dis­cussing the threats—the threats with the grow­ing North Amer­i­can crick­et that can bring in a lot more fans and a lot more rev­enue. I be­lieve we need to ex­am­ine whether we need to move West In­dies crick­et from West In­dies Crick­et Board to the Amer­i­can Crick­et Board, be­cause we have to now move to­wards own­ing crick­et in the Amer­i­c­as, and how do we de­vel­op a strat­e­gy where West In­dies crick­et be­comes the own­er of crick­et with­in the Amer­i­c­as.”

The two-day con­fer­ence wraps up to­day with for­mer West In­dies cap­tain Bri­an Lara ex­pect­ed to de­liv­er an ad­dress vir­tu­al­ly.