Cricket, culture dominate talks between India, Jamaica

Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioned four Cs — Culture, Cricket, Commonwealth and CARICOM — to signify the importance of India’s ties with Jamaica, a cricket playing country in the Caribbean.

Modi was making a joint press statement with his Jamaican counterpart Andrew Holness here on Tuesday. CARICOM is a 15-nation ‘Caribbean Community’, an intergovernmental organisation. Jamaican cricketers play for the West Indies team.

Cricketer Chris Gayle, who is popular in India, was there at lunch with PM Modi and there was a lot of discussion on cricket, said Jaideep Mazumdar, Secretary, East, in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). Olympic medallist Neeraj Chopra was also invited to the lunch.

Modi presented a cricket bat signed by Indian cricket team to the PM of Jamaica, who also gifted a cricket bat (signed by Gayle) to Modi. At the joint press statement, Modi said: “We discussed strengthening our cooperation across all sectors and identified several new initiatives.”

India, he said, would be pleased to share successful experience in the space sector with Jamaica as well. India also named the road in front of the Jamaica High Commission in Delhi as “Jamaica Marg”.

The two countries today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on New Delhi’s successful ‘digital public infrastructure’ that would promote financial inclusion and social and economic transformation. This would use the Indian experience.