Sascha Wil­son

Work is mov­ing apace to get the con­tro­ver­sial mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um and Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba ready for a month-end open­ing. This was re­vealed by sources yes­ter­day. In an an­nounce­ment last week, Sport Min­is­ter Gary Hunt said in­vi­ta­tions were be­ing print­ed for the gala open­ing of the sta­di­um, which was orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled to be opened for the ICC World Cup Crick­et tour­na­ment in 2007. Dur­ing a post-cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's, Hunt dis­closed that they had be­gun to print in­vi­ta­tions for the open­ing, but could not give an "ex­act date when the fa­cil­i­ties would be hand­ed over."

At the project site yes­ter­day, two se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers kept guard at the front booth to ward off un­want­ed vis­i­tors. The guards said no one in charge was at the site and they had no way of con­tact­ing them ei­ther. The guards said they could not di­vulge any in­for­ma­tion about the project. A source told the Guardian that a March open­ing had been an­tic­i­pat­ed, but the con­trac­tors were un­able to com­plete the in­fra­struc­ture. The com­ple­tion date was ex­tend­ed by one month. "The crick­et area is not done yet, they are still putting down rub­ber tiles and car­pet, they still cast­ing and the fence is not fin­ished...they are now run­ning lights on the pavil­ion and putting up the gate, plumb­ing and air-con­di­tion­ing is still be­ing done," the source said.

It is un­der­stood a bridge was al­so be­ing con­struct­ed at the back of the fa­cil­i­ty. The project, which be­gan in 2004, was one of two projects iden­ti­fied by chair­man of the Com­mis­sion of In­quiry in­to Ude­cott, Pro­fes­sor John Uff, "which rep­re­sent a se­ri­ous down­side of the Ude­cott's per­for­mance both in terms of time, cost and qual­i­ty of work." In his re­port sub­mit­ted to Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards, Uff said: "The Bri­an Lara project has suf­fered mas­sive de­lays. In­stead of achiev­ing com­ple­tion in ear­ly 2007 as promised, the project is now drift­ing out of con­trol with no pre­dictable com­ple­tion date. "Costs have like­wise es­ca­lat­ed out of con­trol and are now pre­dict­ed to ex­ceed $700 mil­lion as against the ini­tial bud­get of $272 mil­lion," Uff said.

"The fi­nal cost of com­ple­tion, in what­ev­er form is cho­sen, can­not be pre­dict­ed at this time." The Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my and the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Sta­di­um (15,000 seat­ing) were among a num­ber of fa­cil­i­ties to be housed in the Tarou­ba Sport­ing Com­plex. The oth­ers in­clude an elite cen­tre of ex­cel­lence for sports sci­ence, sports med­i­cine, bio me­chan­ic lab, test­ing and con­di­tion­ing, an aquat­ic cen­tre, a cy­cling velo­drome, a cen­tre for field house sports, a box­ing and mar­tial arts cen­tre, a gym­nas­tic cen­tre, a ten­nis cen­tre, an ad­min­is­tra­tive cen­tre and ho­tel ac­com­mo­da­tion.