Sabina Park.
Although the rehabilitation work at Sabina Park has been hit by several delays, Jamaica Cricket Association (JCA) president Dr Donovan Bennett says he’s confident everything will be in place for the third Test between West Indies and Australia next week.
Sabina Park is set to host the historic day/night pink ball test, starting on July 12, as well as two T20 internationals on July 20 and July 22.
In preparation for the visiting Aussies, the JCA received $75 million from the Government to upgrade the lighting to meet international standards and also received a modern scoreboard from the Indian Government.
The JCA had set a target for the work to be completed before the end of May but are still in the process of finishing necessary upgrades.
The Jamaica Observer understands the matches between the all-Grace Shield team and the all-Headley Cup team last week showed that some of the newly installed lights needed to be adjusted as they weren’t properly focused.
Bennett says the matter is being addressed and expects no lighting issues going forward.
“We have done a lot of focusing but there’s just one little area that we’re concerned about right now and that’s a patch area in front of the Kingston Cricket Club stand, which we should be working on [Wednesday night],” he told the Observer.
“Certain areas of the field are way above the international requirements but there’s one area that we need to work on to get it up. We should finish the rough focusing tonight and the English, who supplied the lights, they will be coming in on the seventh [Monday] with a laser beam to do the final fine-tuning.”
Bennett is also confident the scoreboard issue will be rectified in the coming days.
“We’ve just completed the installation of the replay board and we’ve started the final installation of the main board [on Wednesday] which should be finished [today],” he said. “The reason for the delay is that when we stripped down the frame that the scoreboard should have been installed on, we found a lot of things that we didn’t expect that we had to fix so that also set us back a little bit.”
Both the lights and the scoreboard will need approval from the ICC next week but Bennett is confident they’ll be ready in time.
“I’m pretty sure about that. I’m a little bit uneasy because I would have hoped that everything would have been completed by now but when you’re doing construction, as you go along there are a lot of unforeseen circumstances that you’re challenged with which will push you back and that’s exactly what has happened with the lights and the scoreboard,” he said. “But we’re on target, I’m confident that we’ll be okay with both the lighting and the scoreboard for the 12th, when the games are scheduled, I’m sure we’ll be okay.”
There has been a steady increase in international matches at Sabina Park in recent times including the second Test between West Indies and Bangladesh last November and the three match T20 series with South Africa last May.
Bennett, though, believes the Australia tour is the best marketed series so far and is expecting a good turnout.
“The members of the board who are in charge of that have done a very good job. I think for the first in a long time, people actually know that there’s cricket scheduled for Sabina Park,” he said.
“We’ve been out there, we’ve put out placards, we’ve been on the visual media, the radio, and tried to penetrate the entire country to make them aware that cricket is being played and the ticket sales have been encouraging, too.”
