GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana – The Guyana Crick­et Board (GCB) says the coun­try se­cur­ing a three-year deal to host the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) fi­nals is not on­ly a sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ment but will be a ma­jor boost to crick­et de­vel­op­ment and tourism.

GCB pres­i­dent Bis­soondyal Singh said the de­vel­op­ment was an in­di­ca­tion of the val­ue gov­ern­ment is plac­ing on sports.

It has been an­nounced that Guyana will host the cul­mi­na­tion of the tour­na­ment in 2022, 2023 and 2024. This sea­son, Guyana will host sev­en group games, three knock­out match­es and the Hero CPL fi­nal which will take place on Sep­tem­ber 30 at the Guyana Na­tion­al Sta­di­um in Prov­i­dence.

The Hero CPL fi­nal will be the cli­max of fes­tiv­i­ties sur­round­ing these games tak­ing place in Guyana. The gov­ern­ment of Guyana, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the lo­cal pri­vate sec­tor, will al­so stage two weeks of events which will form a Crick­et Car­ni­val.

Com­mend­ing the gov­ern­ment for its em­pha­sis on sport, as demon­strat­ed in the un­prece­dent­ed GUY$2.2 bil­lion (US$10.5 mil­lion) al­lo­cat­ed for sport in the na­tion­al bud­get, in 2022, Singh said this em­pha­sis on sport has cat­a­pult­ed the de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tive in the coun­try.

“The ap­proach by gov­ern­ment to en­sure these CPL match­es are as­signed to Guyana over the next three years, un­der­scores gov­ern­ment’s com­pre­hen­sive un­der­stand­ing of the val­ue of sport to so­ci­ety,” he said.

“Apart from the ca­reer path­way for crick­eters, the game pro­vides for sev­er­al crick­et-re­lat­ed jobs. Fur­ther, this his­toric an­nounce­ment on the play­ing of CPL se­mi-fi­nals and fi­nals over the next three years will en­able Guyana to ex­plore av­enues for sports tourism.

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, with the ex­pect­ed in­flux of for­eign­ers to Guyana for the match­es, Guyana will ben­e­fit eco­nom­i­cal­ly from the his­toric CPL in­vest­ment,” the GCB pres­i­dent added.

Speak­ing at the an­nounce­ment of Guyana host­ing the fi­nals for the next three years, the coun­try’s Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali said “crick­et is much more than a game for us in Guyana, it is a pas­sion, part of our cul­ture and a uni­fy­ing force”.

“The host­ing of the CPL fi­nal will be an en­er­giz­ing force. We are build­ing a prod­uct that will be spec­ta­tor-fo­cused, in­te­grat­ed with our re­gion­al part­ners for a glob­al mar­ket. Crick­et car­ni­val is a fu­sion of en­ter­tain­ment and cel­e­bra­tion that will be mind-blow­ing and un­be­liev­ably dif­fer­ent from any oth­er glob­al crick­et­ing event,” he promised.

Hero CPL’s CEO Pe­te Rus­sell said the tour­na­ment or­gan­is­ers were very grate­ful to have such a pos­i­tive re­la­tion­ship with the gov­ern­ment and crick­et au­thor­i­ties in Guyana, and thanked them for “help­ing us come to this huge­ly ex­cit­ing agree­ment”.

CMC