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By Neto Baptiste
Improved marketing strategies and the creating of more opportunities for all involved in the tournament are two areas where organizers of the Cool & Smooth Leeward Islands T20 Festival are hoping to advance ahead of next year’s instalment of the tournament.
Chief organizer Dario Barthley, while speaking on the Good Morning Jojo sports show, highlighted those two areas as subjects that will dominate planned post-tournament discussions with teams, officials and other major stakeholders in coming months.
“One of the main things would have obviously been the marketing and I think we were crippled by the fact we couldn’t announce the schedule for quite a long time until basically the day before actually and hopefully in future editions, that problem won’t exist. And it would allow us to execute much better on some of the very good marketing plans we had coming out of our teams. I think we can make it more of a capacity-building exercise and one of the things I was very proud of is that Flow Sports and Cricket 360 came in as part of the production for the tournament and were able to integrate with Parish League with Parish League’s streaming surface,” he said.
The tournament climaxed on Sunday with Anguilla claiming the inaugural edition with a 21-runs triumph over hosts, the Antigua and Barbuda Master Blasters, at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium.
Barthley said they were just happy to have gotten the tournament up and running given the many challenges that arose.
“I think that in our first year that we were able to hit all of the targets that we set for ourselves and it’s really for us to utilize the momentum from this one going forward and hopefully being able to let this continue throughout the years,” he said.
“I think that the fact the tournament was played was a huge positive with the unique challenge that the Leeward and the Windward Islands have in terms of hosting cricket and hosting tournaments due to the logistics, the economics and everything around it being multiple countries or territories. It’s always going to be a challenge to host cricket but with the emergence of T20 cricket throughout the world and the amount of opportunities it provides to players, I think that it is important that both Leeward and Windward Islands have such a tournament and have it be a healthy tournament as well,” he added.
The Antiguan thanked those corporate citizens who assisted in making the tournament a reality while encouraging others to join the movement.
“I think the partnership with LIAT20 was kind of crucial to get started and I think that the possibilities that exist there are really and truly endless, so I am looking forward to meeting with all the stakeholders, inclusive of the Leeward Islands Cricket Board … but all the persons on the ground as well that would have operated around the tournament and getting all of that feedback and hopefully be able to use it to better all areas of the product going forward,” Barthley said.
Six teams including champions Anguilla, hosts Antigua and Barbuda, Nevis, Combined Islands, St Kitts and Combined Virgin Islands, took part in the tournament.
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