One News SVG is a partner promoting the Emancipation Cricket Festival. The following is promotional content.
The Emancipation Cricket Festival presents, Desron Maloney, local marquee player, Kingstown Kings
A star who has been shining on the local scene since his dazzling entrance into youth cricket. A big personality, although soft-spoken, his bat is always ready to feed his rapacious appetite for runs. A pugnacious opening batsman with a sharp cricketing brain, his first-class cricket experience with the Windward Islands Volcanoes will be useful to the Kingstown Kings. Warning to fans: bring your umbrellas because there’s always a forecast for sixes when dazzling Desron Maloney is at the batting crease.
SVG Emancipation Cricket Festival. Something legendary. Cricket meets culture. Freedom meets fire. A celebration 50 years in the making.
July 31-August 3, Arnosvale Stadium, St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
The matches
The matches will begin on Thursday, July 31st, 2025 when Leeward Lions will face Kingstown Kings at 7:00 p.m.
Then, on Friday, August 1, Emancipation Day, Stubbs Masters will face SVG Hairouners at 3:30 p.m., and Grenadines Whalers will face Windward Warriors at 7:00 p.m.
On Saturday, August 2, there will be the third-place play-offs, then on Sunday, August 3rd, Northern Girls will face Southern Girls at 3:30 p.m.
Then the finals which will be between Game 1 and Game 2 winners will take place at 7:00 p.m.
All matches will be held at the Arnos Vale Stadium.
About the festival: This information was published by the government
The Emancipation Cricket Festival, a conjoined remembrance, commemoration, and celebration of the emancipation or freedom for enslaved African bodies, and the historic triumphs of West Indies cricket, take place in SVG between July 31st and August 3rd, 2025, at the Arnos Vale Sporting Facility. On August 1, 1838 or 187 years ago, the Africans, enslaved by the Britishin the West Indies, won their freedom. On May 17, 1965, or sixty years ago, at home, the West Indies test cricket team, under the captaincy of the iconic Garfield Sobers, were crownedunofficial world champions when they defeated the mighty Australians in the test series, two matches-to-one. On June 21, 1975, or 50 years ago, the West Indies one-day cricket team, under the captaincy of the legendary Clive Lloyd, defeated Australia, at Lord’s London, in the inaugural One Day International Championship. These three anniversaries are being brought together at a critical juncture in the evolution of our Caribbean civilisation.
Emancipation brought a formal end to a monumental crime against humanity, slavery in the West Indies; it opened the way for the humanisation of hitherto enslaved Africans, their individual and collective advancement as human beings; subjugation as chattels or things had come to a formal end for the enslaved persons.
Cricket, a quintessential English sport brought to the British colonies in the West Indies, was embraced and fashioned by our colonised people as an instrument of national liberation. In the process we infused this sport, cricket, with a distinctive West Indian style, sense and sensibility, and called it our own. It has been a core component of our ongoing social democratic revolution, and a distinctive cultural plank of our creolisedCaribbean civilisation. Call it the dialectics of cricket.
The Emancipation anniversary of 2025 arrives at a time when there is growing popular support, at home and abroad, for reparations for native genocide and the enslavement of African bodies as part of the process of repairing the historic legacies of underdevelopment brought about the genocide and enslavement in the Caribbean at the hands of European colonial powers (British, French, Dutch, and Spanish); these and other European powers were so engaged in genocide and enslavement in countries in Latin America and elsewhere. In 2013-2014, the ULP government took the initiative at CARICOM to place the issue of reparations permanently on its agenda for ongoingaction and to establish the CARICOM Reparations Commission. Our Prime Minister, Comrade Ralph, not only led the way at CARICOM on this issue, but has been continuously active in this great cause; and in 2014 he caused to be published a book, authored by him, entitled Caribbean Reparatory Justice, which is available on Amazon.
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