LICA Tournament further delayed

Sports Page – – Wednesday 29th May 2013 – – Nevis’ Cricket chief Keith Scarborough, on Tuesday confirmed that the upcoming LICA tournament has been further postponed.

Nevis was set to play Montserrat in Montserrat sometime around mid June but that has now been changed.

Nevis will now engage arch rivals St.Kitts in the first match of the season, at the ET Willet Park. That match is scheduled for the 5th to the 7th July.

Scarborough however is not disappointed as he indicated that the trial squad’s preparation has been hampered by rain and other reasons,

‘That will give us more time to prepare,’ he noted. He indicated that it is the intention of his Association to keep the squad in training, with a trial match scheduled for this coming weekend and more matches scheduled throughout June. The squad will be trimmed to 18 by mid June before it is fine tuned to 13 or 14 players for the St.Kitts game.

Asked about the debacle last week end when the players showed up for a match and the pitch was not prepared. Scarborough explained that his Association is currently cash strapped and would have spent quite some money during the season on pitch preparation for various matches at $200.00 per match ‘and the gentleman who prepares the pitches said that he wanted pay and we could not pay him and so the pitch was not prepared. We don’t even have a sponsor,’ he said.

He however indicated that the matter has since been addressed by the Minister of Sports and the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Sports and adequate arrangements have been made to assign certain duties to the curator of the grounds which will include pitch preparation for the weekend matches.

‘Hopefully we will not have that problem again, he said.

Meanwhile, President Scarborough also gave an update on the situation with the second division fixtures: ‘Empire has already qualified for the finals but we have been having some problems getting the other semi final match played. Rain in most instances and last week Thursday when there was no rain, one of the teams was not properly informed,’ he said. He pointed out that the match was set to be played on Tuesday 28th May but rain once again left the pitch damp and in an unplayable state. The match which will feature Highlights Int and Pennyless All Stars is now set for the ET Willet Park for today Wednesday 29th May with the finals scheduled for Thursday 30th May at the same venue-barring rain or any other unforeseen circumstance.