T20 World Cup sales going well, says Sports Minister

Enough tickets have already been sold for Barbados’ ICC T20 World Cup games to fill the famed Kensington Oval three times over, according to figures from Minister of Sports Charles Griffith.

Ticket sales have been going well as the 11 000-seat Caribbean cricket Mecca prepares for the tournament he told the House of Assembly on Tuesday.

“As of today, 31 000 tickets were sold for games in Barbados, and that number includes persons from Barbados who were able to purchase tickets online. On April 5, there was a final inspection by the ICC and Cricket West Indies in terms of what they were looking for, and I am pleased to report that Barbados was way in advance of any location within the Caribbean.

“The media hub at [Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre] is more than adequate for those 200-and-so-plus individuals who will be here to cover the Cricket World Cup,” Griffith added. “The Party Stand will have a capacity of 2 500 persons at that particular location. Immediately behind the Party Stand we are erecting something called a grandstand that will also facilitate 2 549 persons at that location. There is also a temporary hospitality stand that is 80 per cent completed, and this is going adjacent to the new side screen that will be put in place.”

Box offices across the island will soon be made available for patrons to buy physical tickets, a move Prime Minister Mottley had lobbied for given the previous stance taken by Cricket World Cup to only have tickets sold online, said Attorney General Dale Marshall.

Marshall said: “The entire region has expressed tremendous gratitude for the prime minister for her intervention on the matter of cricket tickets. When we met in Georgetown at the heads meeting . . . Cricket World Cup had said all of our tickets are being sold online.

“The prime minister said to Cricket World Cup ‘that cannot work. Everybody in the Caribbean is not able to handle things online. Everybody doesn’t have a credit card. Everybody doesn’t have the facility with the with the online purchases and therefore in Barbados, I am going to insist that you have physical box offices so that people can go and stand up in a line and do what they’ve been doing for years – come and buy a ticket and have a ticket in the hand to put it in the pocket, in the wallet and they feel good and they know they have a ticket for cricket’.”

Outside of ticket sales and preparations inside the Oval, the sports minister said the vending and party zones were also receiving final preparations.

“Haymans, Oistins and Pelican, these are areas that are being developed as fan zones for Cricket World Cup. From President Kennedy Drive, that whole area leading up to Kensington will be one of those vendor zones. The second one is coming from the gas station in Fontabelle and going to Kensington, so we have two arteries that will be utilised as vending zones that persons who want to ply their trade and sell different things can benefit in a financial way from those particular locations,” he said.

“I am comfortable as Minister of Sport that all is being done to move the World Cup process forward. The Mecca is being made ready for the world to come and see what is happening in Barbados.”