This September 2022 edition of Wickets marks the 50th Issue to be
published since the magazine was officially launched in August 2018.
For me to be now writing this Publisher’s Message under its foregoing
50 Not Out headline, therefore, represents a personal achievement
of which I am unashamedly proud.
As a teenager and even further well into years as a working young adult, my
beloved now long since departed father whose opinion as the famous former
Guyana and West Indies wicket-keeper batsman that he was mattered more to
me than any others for too often had sufficient reason to accuse me of quitting
too easily. He was more often than not, totally justified in doing so as evidenced
by the fact that until Wickets none of my previous magazine publications had
ever lasted more than a year, certainly never five and counting! The successful
publication of 50 successive Wickets magazine is, therefore for me at least a fairly
big deal and I am eternally grateful for everyone who has had even the slightest
involvement in having made such an achievement possible.
Not the least of those are the companies which have within the past four years
provided their much valued and appreciated financial support to Wickets in the
form of purchased advertising. As the very latest and most recent provider of
such valued financial support I am overly pleased to announce Smart Investments
Property’s acquired involvement as Wickets Promotional Advertising Title
Sponsor for an initial September 2022 – August 2023 one-year term.
This acquired Smart Investments Properties Wickets Promotional Advertising
Title Sponsorship represents the largest single financial commitment the
publication has ever received in its now five-year history. As previously
mentioned there have, of course, been several other notable and sizeable
annual commitments from companies such as Dax Sukhraj’s Keybase Financial
Group, Sukh Toor Real Estate, the Jamaica and Barbados Tourist Boards, Shiv
Misir’s Remax Realty, Alima’s Roti, Pankaj Gupta’s Brampton Mercedes Benz and
last but not in even the slightest manner the least Eric Rodrigues’ Irie Spices, as
by far our longest-ever continuing advertiser!
Despite having received financial support from such an illustrious group of
companies the very sad reality of Wickets advertising to date is that it has for
the greater part been a revolving door. Corporate companies attracted as
they have been by Wickets’ outstanding page designs and content which have
always indisputably been among the very best ever produced by any Canadian
magazine, have pledged their advertising support only to exist just as quickly as
a result of negligible received returns in their investment.
The harsh reality surrounding contemporary advertising is the need for
purchased space to produce almost immediately generated revenues from
resulting sales. The reasons Wickets has failed to retain far too many of its
attracted advertisers have therefore been twofold a) its readers have not been
sufficiently supportive in terms of their responses to ads that have been placed
and even more importantly the numbers of actual readers of Wickets monthly
Issues continue to be relatively small.
Although Wickets’ popularity has continued to grow with each passing year
there are still far too many members of Canada’s vast cricketing community
who today remain wholly ignorant of its actual existence. The good news is that
such an anomaly can now be easily corrected. Wickets.tel website has been
redesigned to include a pop-up invitational greeting for browsers to register
their emails to directly receive their own FREE monthly Issue copies.
Hopefully, that will now serve as the catalyst for Wickets to achieve the
circulation numbers its outstanding provided content so richly deserves. Here’s
hoping, therefore, that in approximately twelve months from now the Wickets
Publisher’s Message headline Issue heralding its next major anniversary will still
be inclusive of the “not out” description rather than that of “retired hurt!”