Crisis deepens - West Indies contracts row

Floyd Reifer led a weakened West Indies team to defeat in the first Test against Bangladesh, but he chose to see the brighter side of a dispiriting loss, lauding his players for fighting hard under adverse circumstances.

"For a team that was brought here right before the Test match, I thought we really fought well," he said. "We represent West Indies and we'll go to Grenada [the venue for the next Test] and fight hard."

"It was a rush, But we've been training and practicing hard, and it's good to be back here again playing Test cricket."

But the players' problems do not look like being addressed and the WI board is adamant that the current team would continue if the players do not return to the fold..  The West Indies board has announced that the squad for the Champions Trophy will be picked from among those currently playing Bangladesh and others who have made themselves available for selection. It also decided to interview prospective captains for future series. These decisions indicate there may be no speedy solution to the stalemate between the board and the West Indies Players' Association (WIPA) regarding player contracts. The move in effect is a warning to those players who did not make themselves eligible for selection for the Bangladesh Test that they will not be considered for future tournaments, and is widely seen as an attempt to put pressure on those who boycotted the game to reconsider their position.

The first major contract issue is that the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) has signed an US$20 million deal with Digicel, a major Caribbean-based telecommunications company. However, a number of players already have personal endorsement deals with a rival company, Cable & Wireless. The board wants the players to sign contracts which will prevent them from promoting any company in competition with Digicel - that might compromise their existing individual contracts with Cable & Wireless.The main income for West Indies players comes from bonuses and third-party endorsements rather than salaries paid by the cash-strapped board. So by looking to restrict the additional income available, the players argue that their income will be seriously reduced. The WICB contract would also mean that the players forfeited a considerable portion of their image rights..-- Nov 2005.. 

The contract issue was unresolved and the tour of Australia for a tri-nation VB series went ahead.. In April 2005, WI named a replacement squad for the tour of  SRL with Shivnaraine Chanderpaul as captain.. The show then continued with agreements from both the sides to field a full strength team with clause 5 that covered players' individual sponsorship deal still left for talks/compromise/arbitration...

2007 WC was sponsored by Cable and Wireless and not Digicel.. After the WC, WICB had planned a tour of England for which the players' demanded extra pay as it was according to them not a part of the FTP.. Their point was proved and the WICB had to face defeat yet again.. Truce was called and Ramnaraine became a director in the WICB only to break away from it in a year or so after serious problems in the domestic arena where the players went on strike..

Among the more critical and outstanding issues were retainer contracts and first-class fees, scheduling of regional and international tournaments, injury payments, the long overdue updated anti-doping policy and the provident fund for cricketers. The national side threatened to boycott the final ODI against England in St Lucia but in the end in went ahead as scheduled. The board agreed to look into pay hikes for first-class players.

In July09 two days before the start of the first Test against Bangladesh, the WIPA announced the squad would boycott the match since the players had gone five series without contracts. WIPA claimed the board had not responded to its submission of retainer contracts and had instead penalised players for not signing those within the deadline. The board vice-president Dave Cameron said the contracts had not been signed because of WIPA's "unreasonable behaviour". WICB named a second-string squad which included nine uncapped players. 

Who is to blame?

Both sides have been less than straightforward in their dealings with each other and traded charges with the other leading to several years of disinformation and mistrust. WIPA has alleged the WICB of reportedly failing to honour a number of assurances given, acting slowly, and allegedly trying to create divisions among the team. The players have been far too prone to withdraw their labour and go on strike, and also to make Digicel, as chief sponsor, the enemy and not the board.

What about the board's announcement at the weekend that it was prepared to pick squads from the youngsters who were available for the Bangladesh Test?

"If the board wants to go ahead with picking who it wants, then that's fine with me. I feel inevitably if you select these 19-year-olds, then sooner or later they're going to be exposed to proper sports management outside the Caribbean, and at some point when they're in a position to understand what's happening, then we're going to come back here again. So, in five or seven years' time you're going back down the same road and you'll have the same issues. We just want to get these issues done once and for all so we can move on.  -- JIMMY ADAMS

 and somewhere along the line we need to stop the game for a while and get this structure sorted out.

This is the call from most former players that WI should pull out of International tours and get the things sorted out before going ahead with cricket.. Playing a 2nd stream  of players will only weaken the side and it ridicules the position that WI find themselves in.. A strong team of the past, a team that was respected and still we speak of the greats that have graced the game of cricket and now it finds itself languishing at the bottom of the ranking charts for quite a while now ;  so sending a 2nd stream or an "A" side as your full side will still dampen their causes in cricketing arena..

Pity that the once mighty WI are in such a situation.. :-(