Vin­ode Mam­chan

The Mon­day May 24 Gen­er­al Elec­tions are threat­en­ing to dis­rupt the two One-day In­ter­na­tion­al (ODIs) match­es and two Twen­ty20 match­es be­tween the West In­dies and South Africa which are card­ed for the Queen's Park Oval. The ODIs fall on ei­ther side of the elec­tion day - Sun­day May 23 and Tues­day May 25, and sources say it will be dif­fi­cult to put things in place to fa­cil­i­tate these two match­es, since se­cu­ri­ty will be a ma­jor chal­lenge dur­ing this pe­ri­od. The Twen­ty20 games which are card­ed for May 19 and 20, have a greater chance of be­ing staged, ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cials. Chair­man of the in­ter­na­tion­al match­es com­mit­tee and ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB), Patrick Ram­per­sad told the Guardian yes­ter­day that a firm de­ci­sion on the stag­ing of the match­es will be made in the next few days.

"We have dis­cussed the sit­u­a­tion and there are dif­fer­ent views but by to­mor­row we are go­ing to com­mu­ni­cate with the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB), let them know of our stance con­cern­ing the mat­ter and leave it up to them, to make the de­ci­sion." Ram­per­sad a for­mer can­di­date for the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR) back in 1994, said the tim­ing of the elec­tions is like­ly to have an ef­fect on the games. "We have two T20 match­es dur­ing the fi­nal week of the elec­tion cam­paign and I think that we will be chal­lenged to get a good crowd for these games, as peo­ple would be in­volved in po­lit­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties. Some may be at­tend­ing to elec­toral mat­ters, while oth­ers might de­cide to at­tend meet­ings and so on.

"Then the elec­tions is smack in be­tween two One-day In­ter­na­tion­als and we may be stretched in terms of hav­ing the num­bers we re­quire, as far as se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel is con­cerned. Now com­ing af­ter the bomb­ing in Ban­ga­lore, there is sure to be some con­cerns for play­ers and spec­ta­tors. "I had in­di­cat­ed to the WICB that an elec­tion was im­pend­ing. This was be­fore the date was an­nounced and now that the date has been re­vealed, we are go­ing to share this with them. "If they de­cide to go ahead, we would have to use our vast ex­pe­ri­ence to stage the match­es. There is al­so the like­li­hood that the WICB may de­cide to call off the four games, or shift the date, or even the coun­try." The WICB start­ed sell­ing tick­ets for the four match­es two weeks ago but sales have been slow.