Players awaiting WICB response on contracts

Ramnarine: not as ebullient as when the retainer was announced © Getty Images

Nearly seven weeks after the retainer contract issue was said to be resolved, West Indies cricketers are still playing without one in place and without even a match tour contract to boot.

As Brian Lara and company currently prepare for the third Test on Thursday in St Kitts, they don't know how much money, if any at all, they are entitled to for the recently concluded tour of Zimbabwe and this ongoing one versus India. And despite several requests by the West Indies Players Association (WIPA), the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) are yet to indicate a date for settlement of the controversial matter.

Amid great fanfare back on April 26, Ken Gordon, the WICB president, announced that a year and a half of difficult negotiations was finally settled. Following protracted contract and sponsorship negotiations that dated back to November 2004, the new retainer agreement was heralded as a landmark one that was supposed to include eight to ten players on a one-year retainer starting back on May 1. It is yet to materialise.

Both Gordon, who is reported to be currently in Germany for the 2006 World Cup, and Dinanath Ramnarine, the WIPA president, had heaped much praise on the attainment of a retainer accord following disagreements over the final terms, a conflict that threatened to disrupt the start of the Zimbabwe series when the newly-formed WICB Cricket Committee headed by Clive Lloyd issued two ultimatums for the conclusion of negotiations.

"This is history for West Indies cricket," Ramnarine had commented, "It is great that we have reached this point in West Indies cricket at this stage. It is one of the steps that we need to put in place to help our cricket forward."

Instead, the process seemed to have come to another stutter despite frequent reminders to the Board from the WIPA. Yesterday when contacted by the Daily Express, Ramnarine was not as ebullient as on that occasion. "I'm disappointed," he admitted, "I thought we had gone past this stage but it seems the Board is not prepared to move forward. But we are going to hope that good sense prevails and that we can finally meet with them for the purpose of securing a final resolution on this issue".

On the last of "numerous" communications with the WICB on the finalisation of the retainer issue last Thursday, Ramnarine stated that the Board responded the following day acknowledging the receipt of the correspondence and saying they would respond "in due course". The players who are without a retainer or match tour contract are said to be "very displeased and very dissatisfied with this sort of treatment.

"The worst case scenario is we should have, at least, had match tour contracts. If someone gets injured, how are we gonna be dealing with that?" Ramnarine asked rhetorically. "We have given the Board dates to meet because we want to resolve this issue without making it another public battle again because the public is totally fed up of this situation. So hopefully as I said, good sense prevails."

Earlier this year, Gordon said that anyone who prevented the finalisation of retainer contracts did not have West Indies cricket's best interest at heart.