Letter to Sports Editor… The State of Guyana’s Sport Stadiums: Providence, Bourda & Lenora

Aug 02, 2015 Sports

---

Dear Sports Editor,
During Guyana leg of this year’s Caribbean Premier League at the post match press conference of the Amazon Warriors vs St Lucia Zouks encounter, Zouks captain Kevin Pietersen was asked what his opinion about the pitch.
England’s all-time leading run scorer responded by saying if he really stated what he thought about it, he would get into trouble with CPL authorities and gave a diplomatic answer – it was a “poor wicket”.
For the Warriors, unleashing the two best spinners in the Caribbean; Sunil Narine and Devendra Bishoo – supported by Veerasammy Permaul at the back end of the CPL on the spin friendly wickets of Guyana, should have made them unbeatable at home and propelled them to the first title, after being runners up in the previous two editions.
Poor team batting prevented this, but Pietersen’s point resonates because such surfaces don’t benefit West Indies long term development.
Providence officially has a worse pitch than the Bourda ground, which alongside the Antigua Recreation Ground were renowned as being the flattest tracks in the Caribbean since West Indies played their first home series in 1930.
It plays worse than some tired sub-continent surfaces, which is a strong indictment on the quality of grounds men in Guyana.
Due to Guyana’s Cricket administrative controversies that the WICB has done a poor job of handling since 2011, scheduled Providence tests during the 2012 & 2014 Australia and New Zealand tours were moved.
Frankly that was a blessing in disguise since fans would have wasted their money to watch a test on such an insipid wicket and players would have complained like Pietersen.
The only time Providence ever played well was during the 2010 Twenty20 world cup matches when ICC pitch preparation expert Andy Atkinson helped prepare the pitch.
Atkinson came back to Guyana to repeat the job for the hosting of the Regional Super50 in 2011.
Atkinson noted to me then that he was very concerned that Providence is used so often as multi-purpose stadium for other sports and events, when it was built solely for cricket.
Sports like Football and Rugby which dictates player have to run on the pitch don’t help and as a equal cricket and football fan and sports journalist of both disciplines, I cringe every time the Golden Jaguars play at Providence.
During 2014 World Cup qualifiers, this haunted the football team as FIFA banned usage of the mound stand. Therefore during the big home games versus Costa Rica and El Salvador, the crowd atmosphere which was created for the famous win against Trinidad in 2011 could not be replicated.
One of biggest faux pas of the sports ministry under the PPP government was their lack of general sports vision and many in the sporting fraternity have noted Providence should have never been built for cricket only, but rather as a multi-purpose athletics & football stadium similar to the Hasely Crawford Stadium and Independence Park in Trinidad & Jamaica respectively.
That old idea of refurbishing Bourda by merging it with GFC ground should have been done to preserve the venues legacy and keep the tradition of the premier international cricket venue being in the Capital city.
One passes by Bourda now and its state is shameful.
I have seen the Kensington Oval in Barbados before they built over their stadium and they had more complicated factors to deal with than Bourda when reconstructing that venue.
The Barbados government built apartments for people who had their homes close to Oval and on match days at Kensington police blocks off the road ways leading up to the Oval and shuttle bus systems to go to the venue are enacted. This could have easily been replicated at a hypothetical upgraded Bourda, with bus drivers told that Regent and North Roads cannot be used on game days.
In a nutshell now, the Providence pitch is not good for producing quality cricket and is not suited for hosting high level international football fixtures because the standing in the mound stand is not allowed in FIFA stadium stipulations.
Recently the former government in keeping form with their poor sports judgment – opened the Lenora track and field Stadium which is still not complete, with a shockingly bad parking set-up and humorously embarrassing main stand that is also unsuited for high level football.
In Trinidad & Tobago the famous Brian Lara Stadium that was built for the 2007 World Cup – currently sits abandoned and uncompleted because the current UNC government accused the former PNM government of wasting money to build it.
The current coalition government under the tutelage of Ministers responsible for Sport in Rupert Roopnarine and Nicolette Henry and Sports Director Christopher Jones should do the same with Lenora because it was a waste of tax payer dollars.
Everyone in the sporting fraternity has long been aware that the facility was built in Lenora simply because it’s a PPP voting constituency.
A June 15th Kaieteur article highlighted that Director of Sport Christopher Jones was beginning an outreach to develop sports facilities around the country.
Bourda ground redevelopment and a new multi-purpose stadium for football and athletics etc built in a strategically smart area should be highest on his agenda.
Colin Benjamin.

---

---