Sabina Park or Trelawny?

(Jamaica Observer)

As cricket grounds go, Sabina Park is as historic and brimming with wonderful tradition, as they come.

It dates back to the late 19th century and for a hundred years or more has been accepted as the mecca of Jamaica's cricket. In 1930 when West Indies hosted its first Test series, England being the tourists, the fourth Test was at Sabina Park and there has never been any serious thought given to playing Test cricket anywhere else in Jamaica.

And as the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA) said in a release recently, Sabina commands a certain mystique for cricket fans not only in Jamaica and the Caribbean, but the wider world.

It therefore comes as no surprise that most of the game's faithfuls would want Sabina Park to be Jamaica's World Cup venue in 2007.

Unfortunately, there is far more to this than tradition and history. First and foremost, Sabina Park is a small ground, currently seating no more than 15,000 people and that's absolutely jam-packed. The word is that for a semi-final and final, which is what Jamaica must be aiming at, the venue must have a seating capacity that is at least double that. Which means there will have to be major reconstruction of Sabina Park in a context of very limited space, in an already built-up area, at a cost of many millions of US dollars.

At the same time, under stipulations from the International Cricket Council (ICC), there will have to be large open spaces adjacent to the ground to facilitate a wide range of activities, including practice nets and recreational areas. It would be a tight squeeze. But given the likely availability of neighbouring Emmet Park and Winchester Park, which are owned by St Georges College, and the purchase and conversion of residential property to the north of Sabina, it's very possible.

But now we have this competing proposal for a brand new facility in a wide open area of Trelawny that would cater not only for cricket but a range of other sports as well. The pro-Trelawny lobby point out the obvious, that the space difficulties facing Sabina will not be encountered here. It would be very, very costly, but word is that private funding has already been identified for the Trelawny project.

Since it is at the very heart of Jamaica's north-coast, the haven of tourism, a major advantage of the so-called Greenfield site will be the proximity of thousands of hotel rooms. That's unlike Kingston where rooms to put up the many thousands of visitors from all over the world would be a major hurdle.

Those who keep saying that a stadium of this magnitude in Trelawny would be a 'white elephant' should stop saying so. It reeks of the kind of ignorance, soaked in arrogance, that you so often get from people who believe Jamaica begins and ends in Kingston.

The truth is that much of Jamaica, not least the north and west coast, are being rapidly urbanised. Some would say unfortunately so. Towns like Montego Bay and Ocho Rios have grown with great speed over recent decades and the need for a properly equipped stadium has been increasingly obvious.

The case has long been made for a modern facility that will cater to sports tourism. Make no mistake about it, Jamaica would have long cashed in on the kind of cricket-related tourism now taken for granted in Barbados and Antigua but for the fact that Sabina Park and other leading cricket facilities are in crime-scarred Kingston. If properly handled and marketed, a modern, well-equipped facility inclusive of suitable outdoor and indoor nets would attract teams at all levels from England and elsewhere during the off-season.

There is the rub. The pro-Sabina lobby claim that those in favour of Trelawny have no interest in providing what they call a "legacy for cricket" , but are simply riding the back of World Cup cricket to get a multi-purpose stadium built.

Should the PJ Patterson government opt for Trelawny, they will have to very, very carefully make sure that cricket gets its due.

Also, Sabina Park must not be left to wither and die. If Sabina is not to be a world cup venue, the government, cash-strapped though it may be, will have the moral responsibility to make sure that some way, some how, the traditional headquarters of Jamaica's cricket is upgraded to a reasonable standard.

Cricket apart, it makes political and economic sense. The death of Sabina Park would just be another nail in the coffin of rapidly declining downtown Kingston.

Of course, Kingston Club, owners (partially at least) of the hallowed ground, also have their part to play. And as the minister of sport, Portia Simpson Miller, made clear this week, continuing to bar women is definitely not the way to go.

* Garfield Myers is sports editor of the Jamaica Observer, where this column was first published.