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The expansion of cricket in this hemisphere has moved from a mere dream to a reality with the start of this year’s expanded Red Stripe Bowl. With ten teams, Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Windward Islands, Leeward Islands, Guyana, United States, Canada, Cayman Islands and Bermuda competing, the tournament now attracts a much larger audience.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) has given the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) the mandate to promote the growth of the game in this hemisphere and the Red Stripe Bowl is the perfect vehicle for providing more teams with an opportunity to play cricket at the first class level.

With both Canada and the United States competing, the Red Stripe Bowl has the potential to become the perfect conduit to tap the full potential of the North American market.

Millions of West Indians and persons of West Indian decent live in North America and greater utilisation of resources in this area can only be to the benefit of cricket.

Expanded tournament

The object is to expand the tournament as far and wide as possible and add as many teams that will be able to give additional value to the tournament.

It is also expected there will continue to be increases in attendance at matches as the expanded programme serves to recruit more fans to the game of cricket.

Among the other positive spin-off effects is the improvement of grounds as more countries vie for the honour of staging various legs of the tournament.

Of course one should not forget that the Red Stripe Bowl also serves as the primary means of preparing West Indian players for international One-Day tournaments and thus its importance has grown as we go through the process of rebuilding the regional team.

This year’s tournament will also see expanded media coverage, thanks to an agreement reached between the WICB and Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) in which CMC has secured the rights to broadcast the semifinal and final matches of our regional tournaments.

Not only will live radio coverage be carried on CMC member stations but this year will also see greater television coverage as CMC has secured the rights to broadcast all first class cricket held under the auspices of the Board.

As a result of this there will be one-hour nightly television highlights of first round matches while the semifinals and the finals will be broadcast live on television.

This agreement is a tremendous achievement as it allows cricket to have the same level of exposure that competing sports have and can only augur well for the development of the game.

The benefits of this will increase significantly when efforts are made to have these games broadcast outside the region.

© The Barbados Nation