BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – Government on Saturday signed a US$25 million loan from the African Export–Import Bank (Afreximbank) to redevelop Kensington Oval, with Chairman of the Kensington Oval Management Inc (KOMI) outlining plans to transform the facility into a multi-purpose venue.
Chairman of Afreximbank Professor Benedict Oramah and Prime Minister Mia Mottley signing the loan agreement.The Mecca, as Kensington Oval is known as, will host nine matches of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, including the final. It hosts regional and international cricket and entertainment events on occasion. But KOMI Chairman Damien Gaskin said the plan is to make the Oval capable of holding a wider range of events.
“Legacy was a major aspect of the entire plan around the redevelopment,” Gaskin said at the ceremony at which Prime Minister Mia Mottley and Chairman of Afreximbank Professor Benedict Oramah signed the loan agreement. “That legacy will include an indoor facility with the latest technology to help our cricketers training year round, and even be able to add science to their training and rehabilitation. We are looking at drop-in pitches, we want to increase the utilisation of the Oval, we want to be able to hold a big concert one day, and then hold a huge cricket match three to four days later without any negative impacts on the field. We are not only sprucing it up, we are improving it for years to come.”
While the T20 World Cup is KOMI’s immediate focus, Gaskin said management also had as a priority, expanding the facility’s income-earning potential.
“We at the Oval want to become less dependent on these big one-off events. These big one-off events are great, and we will play our role globally in terms of facilitating these events, but I believe that if we can host an event which is as big as the Super Bowl, then we can host any event in the world. I believe that wholeheartedly. We want to be the destination of choice for events in the world, not only as a facility, but as a country. I think we can host the biggest events in the world outside of cricket,” he said.
Prime Minister Mottley also disclosed she recently had discussion with the CEO of the Florida Cruise Ship Association Michelle Paige about “new, authentic tours”.
“I’ve asked the NCF [National Cultural Foundation] and Sports Council and also KOMI, to be able to put on a cricket T10 for our cruise ship tourists. So they come in, they learn a little bit about the game, they get a chance to practise and see who can bowl and who can bat, and then you have two teams. You use some of our icons, some of our masters, or even some of the youngsters who may be here; you have three or more Bajans on each team and then the others are tourists. Imagine being able to go back and tell, especially with the number of British tourists that come in here for the P&O homeporting, that you have played cricket at Kensington Oval with Desmond Haynes or one of the greats. So the sky is really the limit,” Mottley told the gathering.
The prime minister also said the government was still planning to sell the naming rights of one of the most iconic cricket grounds in the world.
“There has to be some kind of international tender with respect to the name and rights of Kensington. This is now par for the course of ever major iconic ground in the world,” she said. “We could not contemplate doing it without upgrading the facility.”
Meanwhile, Gaskin disclosed that the work on Kensington Oval is well advanced.
“We have done a lot of work to this point. We started the work in earnest in November to bring us to probably over 80 per cent complete in a lot of the works that we have had to do,” he said.
