BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – The government on Saturday signed a US$25 million loan from the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) to redevelop Kensington Oval, with the Chairman of the Kensington Oval Management Inc (KOMI) outlining plans to transform the facility into a multi-purpose venue.
The Mecca, as Kensington Oval is known, will host nine matches of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, including the final. It also 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 train 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 utilization 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 prioritized 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 facilitating these events. I believe that if we can host an event as big as the Super Bowl, we can host any event worldwide. I believe that wholeheartedly. We want to be the destination of choice for events globally, 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 a discussion with the Florida Cruise Ship Association CEO, 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, learn a bit about the game, get a chance to practice, and see who can bowl and bat. 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 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 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 international tender concerning the name and rights of Kensington. This is now par for the course of every 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 percent complete in many of the works we have had to do,” he said.
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