John Kenny's World Cup Diary
Entry 19 - 12 April
Barbados is a beautiful Island. A tourist destination with the capital, Bridgetown, full of bars, hotels and restaurants and, unlike our last two ports of calls, Jamaica and Guyana, the island has one of the highest standards of living and literacy rates in the Caribbean.
There are a number of Irish living on the island working for phone company Digicel. They are based on many of the Caribbean islands and their ranks are being swelled by returning Irish fans who were in Jamaica for the group games and who are now coming back here for the games against Australia and Bangladesh. A number will also stay on for the final Super 8 Game against Sri Lanka in Grenada next Wednesday.
Barbados has a population of around a quarter of a million and most are of African origin, descendants of slaves who worked on the sugar plantations. The remainder of the population includes groups of Europeans, mostly from Britain, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain.
Tourism is the big money spinner but, rather like Ireland, Barbados has seen a construction boom, with the development of new hotels, offices and housing.
And the beaches: miles and miles of sandy beaches with crystal clear waters which I took to when I did a two-tank scuba dive on one of my very few afternoons off. All in the name of research you understand.
The Kensington Oval, where Ireland will play their games against Australia and Bangladesh, is also the venue for the World Cup final organised by the much criticised International Cricket Council (ICC).
Radio programmes on the island have blasted both the West Indies team and their captain, Brian Lara, but also the ICC for its hosting of the competition.
I heard it said the other day that ticket prices in South Africa four years ago amounted to around $130 for six games, while six games in the Caribbean were costing somewhere in the region of over $600. Many of the locations like Jamaica and Guyana have relatively poor populations and cannot afford the prices.
The ICC says that the Local Organising Committees set the prices in order to recoup the cost of stadiums. If they did, it backfired with no game sold out thus far, even ones involving the West Indies.
It will be interesting to see if they turn a profit. It's been a bad World Cup for the ICC. Lara's Windies won't make the semi-finals, Pakistan and India have long gone and with it the monies that they would have spent. Ireland and Bangladesh qualifying for the Super 8s may be romantic, but the ICC hate it as it means the big guns of world cricket are out.
Sponsorship paranoia has also stepped in. In one case I heard of, a bottle of rum was smuggled into a hospitality area by a punter and when it was spotted, it led to accusations of 'ambush' advertising and a two-and-a-half hour meeting ensued trying to find out why it happened.
The world has gone mad.
