BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – Fol­low­ing the con­clu­sion of the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) fi­nal at the icon­ic Kens­ing­ton Oval, Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley has de­clared the host­ing of the event a re­sound­ing suc­cess, sig­nalling her gov­ern­ment’s in­tent to bid for fu­ture fi­nals while call­ing for a uni­fied re­gion­al in­vest­ment in the sport.

Speak­ing to the me­dia af­ter the match, Mot­t­ley ex­pressed im­mense pride in Bar­ba­dos’ abil­i­ty to stage the mar­quee event, stat­ing that the is­land is ea­ger to re­main a cen­tral hub for Caribbean crick­et.

“We’re not greedy, but we’re go­ing to be in the mix, even if not next year, in the near fu­ture,” Mot­t­ley said re­gard­ing the host­ing rights. “So I know that oth­er coun­tries have been speak­ing, and we will work with them. But as I said, this is some­thing that unites the re­gion, and once we get the abil­i­ty for peo­ple to trav­el and move eas­i­ly, then I think you’re go­ing to see a lot more Caribbean peo­ple mov­ing for CPL crick­et.”

The Prime Min­is­ter em­pha­sised that the suc­cess of the tour­na­ment re­lies heav­i­ly on tan­gi­ble sup­port rather than hope.

She out­lined her ad­min­is­tra­tion’s com­mit­ment to grass­roots and high-per­for­mance de­vel­op­ment, re­veal­ing that fund­ing for a new high-per­for­mance cen­tre is cur­rent­ly in mo­tion.

“You have to in­vest. You can­not stand by and just see things and hope, by serendip­i­ty, that things will hap­pen,” she as­sert­ed. “I’m hap­py that the mon­ey that we’re putting in­to the high-per­for­mance cen­tre, we’re mov­ing on that now.”

Mot­t­ley high­light­ed the broad­er sig­nif­i­cance of sports in shap­ing the re­gion’s youth, de­scrib­ing Caribbean ath­letes and artists as “glob­al cit­i­zens” with deep lo­cal roots.

“I re­al­ly, re­al­ly want, as I said, to be able to make the in­vest­ment in our young peo­ple be­cause, as we’ve al­ways said, glob­al cit­i­zens, Ba­jan roots, glob­al cit­i­zens, Caribbean roots,” she stat­ed.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the eco­nom­ic chal­lenges the re­gion has faced over the past decade, Mot­t­ley reaf­firmed that crick­et re­mains a non-ne­go­tiable pri­or­i­ty for her gov­ern­ment.

“Clear­ly, the last decade or two has not been easy for the coun­try. But de­spite that, we still found time to pri­ori­tise be­cause we un­der­stand what crick­et means to Ba­jans and to Caribbean peo­ple,” she con­clud­ed.

The Prime Min­is­ter’s com­ments serve as a ral­ly­ing cry for oth­er Caribbean na­tions to fol­low suit, en­sur­ing that the sport con­tin­ues to thrive through strate­gic gov­ern­ment in­vest­ment and re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion.

(CMC)