Just one day ahead of their cricket encounter with the Guyana Jaguars in the Regional 4-day Cricket Tournament, The Windward Islands Volcanoes have received sponsorship from the Discover Dominica Authority to the tune of over EC$ 12,000.
The donation was announced at a press conference at Windsor Park Sports Stadium.
The Volcanoes and Jaguars will battle each other from March 20-23 at the Windsor Park Stadium starting at 10:00 each day.
Chief Executive Officer of the Discover Dominica Authority (DDA) Colin Piper said this is a continuation of a partnership between the DDA and the Windward Island Cricket Board (WICB) which began in 2012 with the sponsorship of the Caribbean T-20 Tournament.
“I am happy to inform that we again have partnered with the WICB in sponsoring the Windward Volcanoes in the WICB Professional cricket league regional 4-day competition and the Nagico Super 50 which occurred a while back,” he said. “The sponsorship fee is EC$ 12,500 which has assisted the WICB and the Volcanoes management to procure the uniform and to defray other costs and Dominica benefits in a number of ways.”
Piper said that the DDA’s name and logo will be placed on the uniforms, the country will benefit economically through accommodation, the teams daily expenditure, increased awareness from the coverage of the match through commentators, and from images that will go out from the media stories on the match. He said the country will also benefit from proceeds from visitors who arrive to participate or as spectators who pay for accommodations, restaurants and transportation, among others.
“DDA feels that it is important to support sports tourism,” Piper noted and added that this is “in keeping with the Government’s thrust to create opportunities by which we can continue to be in the public domain and so increase awareness and economic activity in particular from sporting niches.”
General Manager of the Windward Islands team, Gregory Shillingford, said he was grateful for the sponsorship.
“We are very appreciative and grateful with the sponsorship we’ve been able to procure from Discover Dominica,” he stated.
“DDA has proved to be a key partner for Windward Island Cricket and this continuing sponsorship demonstrates that effort.”
The Windward Islands Volcanoes team is made up of players from St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada and Dominica.
I understand why the DDA might want to sponsor the Windward Islands cricket team. What I don’t understand is why wait until the tournament is over to do it? How will the country benefit from this? Everything listed by Colin Piper would have happened without the sponsorship because the match is being played here anyway.
As a private citizen…..Am I able to purchase a similar jersey depicted in the photo? Looks like great advertising for DA throughout the OECS and possibly throughout the world.
The PCL league is almost finished , in fact, Guyana has already won the competition. Many games were played all over the West Indies for free to empty stands, why does Dominicans have to pay to see the game. If their is to be a payment, why not just charge $5.00, but $10 for a game of no importance , in my opinion, that is highway robbery.
When organisations in Dominica need a little help from DDA for tourism type activities not a helping hand. But they can find money to give to windward islands sponsorship? They irony of this place called Dominica. Not even t-shirts they will give or use theirmachinery to engage the french departments. Nothing nothing nothing!