‘Bring the Children’…
UNDER the ‘Bring the Children’ initiative of the ICC Twenty20 World Cup Guyana Project Office, 4 800 children drawn from 245 schools spread across Guyana will be given a chance to witness one of the game’s showpiece which will bowl off on April 30 at the Guyana National Stadium. At a simple, yet significant presentation held in the Queen’s College auditorium yesterday, Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport Dr Frank Anthony along with the Ministry’s Permanent Secretary Pulander Khandi received the tickets from ICC T20 World Cup (Guyana) Events Manager KJ Singh which will be given to 145 secondary and 100 primary schools.
Primarily, the ICC had offered free under-16 tickets with the purchase of regular tickets for the matches in the host countries for the men’s version of the tournament; Guyana, St Lucia and Barbados but the tickets were quickly devoured by the cricket-hungry fans in Guyana.
However, thanks to the unrelenting approach from Minister Anthony to the ICC asking them how they could afford the unfortunate children in schools the experience of a piece of history, they were given more than what was bargained for.
“We want the children to ‘Bring It’ to the stadium and support the West Indies,” Dr Anthony urged during his short discourse to the gathering who all erupted with applause.
The enthusiastic Sport Minister pointed out that the shorter format of the game Twenty 20 has been turning a lot of children to the sport and as such, his ministry has planned to host a school’s 20/20 tournament.
‘We want to promote Twenty20 cricket in schools and that is why soon we will host a 20/20 school’s tournament where we will be outfitting all the schools with T-shirts and giving them the proper equipment and on.
But right now it’s about the T20 World Cup and I’m happy with the way things have been going so far. I think the people here have been doing a great job so we want to make this a memorable moment for Cricket when we host the matches,” said Minister Anthony.
He said that he’s certain that the stadium will be transformed into a true Carnival and Caribbean atmosphere with steel pans playing the anthems of the respective countries.
The tickets which were allocated to the schools will be used for the two warm-up matches on April 27 and 28 along with May 3 and 4 matchdays. May 3 will see Sri Lanka face Zimbabwe and West Indies play their English counterparts.
Khandi assured that the tickets will be delivered in a transparent manner to the selected schools which he said are not centred in Georgetown.
“I can say that schools outside of Georgetown will be given a chance to see these matches, especially the ones who we know normally participate in cricket competitions and so on and I must say that I trust it will be done in a transparent manner so we wouldn’t have any problems,” Khandi noted.
It is the first time that the Caribbean is hosting the T20 World Cup and Guyana will host the opening ceremony on April 30 along with the first-round matches which also include all of the matches involving the West Indies.