As anticipation builds for the historic pink-ball Test between West Indies and Australia at Sabina Park, Cricket West Indies (CWI) CEO Chris Dehring has thrown his support behind the multimillion-dollar upgrade of the venue, particularly the installation of lights, as he insisted that the investment is justified well beyond the one-off spectacle.

The final encounter in the three-match series, scheduled to bowl off on Saturday, will be the first day-night Test ever played in Jamaica, and Dehring admits there is always some anxiety leading into a major fixture. However, he believes all signs are pointing towards a successful staging.

"You're never comfortable until the match starts and everything moves along. I will never forget in 1998, Andrew, Sonny Peart, and I couldn't believe that everything was ready, perfectly ready and in place at midday the day before a Test match, because that had never happened before," Dehring reflected.

"Of course that match was abandoned because the pitch didn't live up to expectations. So no matter what you do, you can prepare for the worst, but you still have to do your best. We think everything is certainly looking on track at this point in time, and we should have a great game," he added during an appearance on the Mason and Guest show.

One of the more prominent concerns raised by observers, including former captain Carl Hooper, is the lack of a dry run for the new lights under Test match conditions. Jamaica has never hosted a pink-ball Test nor recently trialled one at the first-class level. Still, Dehring dismissed the notion that Jamaica is unprepared.

"There has to be a first time for everything. So yes, this will be the first day/night Test in Jamaica, but I'm sure Jamaica is as capable as any other country in the region. In fact, when I looked at the sort of measurements coming out of the early testing of the light, it actually looked good compared to most of the lights across the Caribbean. I don't know how many lights in the Caribbean actually meet these particular standards, but let's see. Dr. [Donovan] Bennett has done his work, and the Jamaican government has contributed, so it's a great effort," Dehring said.

Beyond the immediate cricketing spectacle, Dehring highlighted the broader utility of the upgrades, as he pointed to Sabina Park’s multipurpose nature and its importance as a key urban stadium in Kingston.

"Sabina Park hosts more than just cricket. It hosts so much football because the National Stadium is a 30,000-seater, and sometimes those matches are not suitable for the National Stadium, and so Sabina Park is used quite extensively for football and other sports," Dehring shared.

"Look, there's no stadium that is feasible without lights. That's a reality. You just have such a much larger addressable audience with lights, so it's really a question of making sure Sabina remains feasible rather than saying that lights are an additional expenditure. The reality is that the stadium is just not feasible without lights, and that is not just for cricket, so I think it'll be great," he declared.

With Jamaica having missed out on hosting matches during last year's ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, Dehring sees this Test as part of a larger mission to re-establish the island as a regional cricketing powerhouse—on and off the field.

"Jamaica is a big market for us. It's half of the population of the Caribbean, half of Cricket West Indies raw material in terms of players. It's also half of the commercial value of the region. So if we leave that particular piece of the market on its own to just drift or continue to drift, we as a collective are also going to be in problems. So we have to focus and make sure that Jamaica comes back into the fold," Dehring asserted.

He continued: "It was very disappointing that it didn't get to host matches in T20 (World Cup), but that just goes to show you that we need to do some work, and so putting in the lights, hopefully we'll have an entertaining Test match. Test cricket around the world has been challenged in terms of attraction; even in India, it just started to show some weaknesses.

"So we can use this opportunity of lights, the first day/night Test match in Jamaica, to generate quite a bit of excitement and entertainment that people are looking for. Quite frankly, it's exciting that people, younger people, actually want to get involved in Test cricket in Jamaica. So some good signs are there, and hopefully the crowd comes out, and hopefully the West Indies will win."