Since the 1880s, when the first com­bined West In­dies team formed and toured Cana­da and the Unit­ed States, crick­et has been the most suc­cess­ful means of unit­ing the Eng­lish-speak­ing is­lands and ter­ri­to­ries in this re­gion.

The his­to­ry of the gen­tle­man’s sport in the Caribbean pre­dates the ac­cep­tance in 1926 of the West In­di­an Crick­et Board (WICB) — as it was known then — by the sport's in­ter­na­tion­al rul­ing body, known then as the Im­pe­r­i­al Crick­et Con­fer­ence.

That and the fact that in 1928 the Windies was the fourth crick­et­ing 'na­tion' to gain Test sta­tus, is why such a large part of the Caribbean is steeped in deep crick­et tra­di­tion.

This is why it is so per­plex­ing that the con­fed­er­a­tion of 15 na­tions rep­re­sent­ed by the Windies team, with a com­bined pop­u­la­tion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly six mil­lion, has nev­er ful­ly har­nessed the ben­e­fits of this pop­u­lar team sport.

How­ev­er, it still isn’t too late, even now with the Windies well past its gold­en era of the 1970s to mid-1990s.

Windies' dom­i­nance was dis­played in the first two edi­tions of the ICC World Cup in 1975 and 1979 when the leg­endary Sir Clive Lloyd led the team to vic­to­ries.

Since then, even in a pe­ri­od of de­cline, the Windies re­mains the on­ly team in the sport's his­to­ry to be crowned cham­pi­ons si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly in three ICC World Cup tour­na­ments, the 2016 men’s World T20, women’s World T20, and Un­der-19 World Cup.

It is still a fact that this re­gion has pro­duced some of the most leg­endary play­ers, a list that in­cludes Learie Con­stan­tine, Garfield Sobers, the three Ws — Frank Wor­rell, Ever­ton Weekes and Clyde Wal­cott —, Son­ny Ra­mad­hin, Sir Viv Richards, Michael Hold­ing, Sir Curt­ly Am­brose, Bri­an Lara, Shiv Chan­der­paul and too many oth­ers to be in­clud­ed in this lim­it­ed space.

While some may ar­gue that Windies is past its glo­ry days, the en­dur­ing ap­peal of the game can still be seen in the en­er­getic crowds at­tend­ing match­es in the cur­rent ninth edi­tion of the ICC T20 World Cup be­ing played at venues across the re­gion and the USA.

At present, crick­et and the Caribbean and North Amer­i­can re­gion are en­joy­ing a mo­ment on the glob­al stage that doesn’t hap­pen very of­ten, with lovers of the sport from around the world con­verg­ing at venues for games and mil­lions more tun­ing in for the live broad­casts.

A pop­u­lar sport might be the draw­ing card but there are oth­er ben­e­fits to be gained dur­ing this ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ment with the Caribbean’s di­verse cul­tur­al her­itage, rich in his­to­ry, his­tor­i­cal sites, food, mu­sic, art and ar­chi­tec­ture, on dai­ly dis­play, and the USA now try­ing to es­tab­lish a foothold in the sport.

Sports tourism, a mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar, rapid­ly ex­pand­ing seg­ment of the glob­al tourism in­dus­try, should be in sharp­er fo­cus right now while the re­gion is en­joy­ing an in­flux of crick­et fans and in­tense me­dia cov­er­age of the World T20 tour­na­ment.

The Caribbean re­gion is on full dis­play, as the broad­cast­ers are high­light­ing at­trac­tions and ac­tiv­i­ties unique to this part of the world at every op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Gov­ern­ments and re­gion­al en­ti­ties should be pig­gy­back­ing on this un­prece­dent­ed op­por­tu­ni­ty to pro­mote our con­fed­er­a­tion of crick­et-play­ing coun­tries as pre­mier des­ti­na­tions for sports tourism. Af­ter more than 140 years of be­ing deeply im­mersed in this game, it is time to fol­low oth­er lead­ing crick­et­ing na­tions and reap more of the ben­e­fits.