KINGSTON, April 25: The party is over, now time for West Indies to foot bill as people of the region will now feel pinch as they will have to pay through their nose cost of inflated and mismanaged Cricket World Cup.

As International Cricket Council (ICC) gets ready to pack its bags after 49-day extravaganza, it will leave behind a trail of financial misery for Caribbean people, claimed an opposition leader.

“We warned Caribbean might get less than 25 percent of millions regional governments spent on hosting 2007 World Cup,” Dr David Estwick told members of Democratic Labour Party (DLP).

DLP would take “a wait and see attitude” till the tournament's final on Saturday, before addressing countrymen about crisis.

“It is ridiculous regional leaders now say they signed onto something they fully did not understand,” he said. “People have been saying we were taken hostage by ICC and based on what I've seen so far, I would tend to agree with that assessment.”

He said studies had been done on mega sporting events between 1984 and last Olympic Games, which showed promises of lucrative profit were empty, and most hosts made less than 25 percent profit in relation to amount of money spent.—Agencies