AFTER YEARS of preparation, the ICC WI Cricket World Cup is now upon us.

Warm-up matches in four territories across the region got under way on Monday, and the tournament officially starts on Sunday with the opening ceremony at the multi-purpose stadium in Trelawny.

Proceedings at the newly-constructed venue on the north coast got off to a horrendous start when many people turned up for work only to be flattened by a bouncer as they were not allowed to enter the venue because they were not accredited.

This included people at all levels, from a high-ranking official of Jamaica Cricket 2007 Limited, the Local Organising Committee (LOC), right across the board to even ground staff that included people dealing with the pitch.

That was quite incredible.

Accreditation passes

Dr. Wayne Reid, chairman of the LOC, assessed the situation perfectly, commenting that "quite a number of the accreditation passes are hand-written and that is not something that should happen. You can't be planning for something for over three years and then end up with hand written accreditation sorted on the day."

The people dealing with accreditation, Rushmans, who are conducting that process for the third consecutive ICC World Cup, in a nutshell narrowed down the problems mainly to thevolume of late applications.

The stated difficulties could certainly have caused some amount of delay and without much evidence, it is not easy to give a solid assessment of the situation.

On one hand there is the Rushmans story and on the other many of those not accredited claim their documentation was handed in on time.

It was clear, at least to people in the media, that something was amiss given that the date for picking up accreditation was shifted from Monday to Friday last week.

It caused great embarrassment, for some, and may have been worse - at a national level - had there not been the type of intervention and common-sense approach applied that ensured enough people were accorded identification to work.

Additionally, special commendation, too, must be extended to Michael Hall, the director of cricket operations for the ICC, who did the practical thing by getting down to business in jumping around and leading ground staff to remove the covers from the pitch.

Significantly, it helped to ensure that the match began at its scheduled 9:30 a.m. start, eventually saving the nation from great embarrassment.

International media

This would have been amplified by the fact that the match took on greater significance because as hosts, the West Indies have attracted quite a bit of attention and with the opening ceremony only days away, members of the international media are here in their numbers.

That it was only a practice game might have equally been a blessing in disguise as the fact that good sense was allowed to prevail.

A number of days are left before the official start, to be followed by the opening match a couple days later with the first match against Pakistan at Sabina Park.

There is still enough time to rise after being felled by that horrendous accreditation bouncer and play a good innings for the Cricket World Cup.