Vin­ode Mam­chan

In an ef­fort to bring crowds to the game and make the crick­et an in­ti­mate af­fair, the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) has de­cid­ed to play all the match­es dur­ing the An­tigua leg of the Re­gion­al Su­per50 at the Sticky Wick­et crick­et ground in St John's An­tigua.

There will be two groups for the up­com­ing Re­gion­al Su­per50 crick­et se­ries, with one based in An­tigua and the oth­er in Bar­ba­dos. The se­mi-fi­nals and fi­nals of the tour­na­ment will al­so be played in An­tigua.

The Sticky wick­et sta­di­um be­came pop­u­lar amongst the crick­et fra­ter­ni­ty when dis­graced for­mer bil­lion­aire Allen Stan­ford built and used the venue to host Stan­ford T20 match­es years ago. Af­ter his fall from grace the fa­cil­i­ty just stood there, was not used and left to de­te­ri­o­rate. The fi­nal game held at the ground was the US$20 mil­lion "Twen­ty20 for 20", Stan­ford Su­per­stars v Eng­land, on 1 No­vem­ber 2008.

The WICB through a part­ner­ship with the gov­ern­ment of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da has been able to ac­quire the fa­cil­i­ty and their head of­fices will be housed there as well. Prime Min­is­ter of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Hon Gas­ton Browne had giv­en the com­mit­ment that they will part­ner with the WICB on the ac­qui­si­tion and it has come to pass.

The WICB has been spruc­ing up the venue which is ca­pa­ble of hold­ing 5000 fans and it will be used for all the Re­gion­al Su­per50 match­es at the venue, in­clud­ing the se­mi-fi­nals and fi­nals. By stag­ing the match­es here the WICB will al­so save mon­ey in terms of rental of the Sir Vi­vian Richards Sta­di­um which will now be used for First Class and Test and ODI crick­et.

Sticky Wick­et Sta­di­um, is a crick­et ground in Os­bourn, Saint George Parish of An­tigua. It was pre­vi­ous­ly known as the Air­port Crick­et Ground, be­fore it was tak­en over by the Amer­i­can busi­ness­man. It was used as one of the many home grounds of the Lee­ward Is­lands and al­so host­ed many Twen­ty20 match­es, in­clud­ing both the 2006 & 2008 Stan­ford 20/20 tour­na­ments and the 2008 Stan­ford Su­per Se­ries.

In ear­ly 2009 Stan­ford be­came the sub­ject of sev­er­al fraud in­ves­ti­ga­tions. On 17 Feb­ru­ary 2009 he was charged by the US Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion with fraud and mul­ti­ple vi­o­la­tions of US se­cu­ri­ties laws for al­leged "mas­sive on­go­ing fraud" in­volv­ing $7 bil­lion in cer­tifi­cates of de­posit. Ten days lat­er the SEC amend­ed its com­plaint to de­scribe the al­leged fraud as a "mas­sive Ponzi scheme".