Chris Gayle to discuss West Indies future

Chris Gayle, the West Indies batsman, is scheduled to meet officials from the West Indies Cricket Board and CARICOM in St Vincent on Monday to discuss his future with the West Indies team. The Jamaica Gleaner has reported that Gayle is likely to either submit an apology or retract his comments made against the board and the coach Ottis Gibson during a radio interview.

"A meeting has been arranged for tomorrow morning (today) between Gayle, the WICB and a few heads of government in a bid to arrive at an amicable solution that could result in Gayle returning to the team," Fritz Harris, the Jamaica Cricket Association (JCA) secretary, was quoted as saying in the paper.

"As we are all aware, there have been efforts to have the matter resolved in recent weeks, including all the workings coming out of CARICOM etc, and I suspect that this meeting is a sort of culmination of the efforts."

In October last year, the WICB had said that Gayle could return to the West Indies team if he retracted his critical statements about the board. Gayle had initially said the board was playing mind games with him by not specifying exactly what he needed to apologise for. That meant the already longstanding impasse between Gayle and the board continued, with even the Jamaican prime minister becoming involved by coming out in support of Gayle.

In February this year, the WICB chief executive Ernest Hilaire said he wanted Gayle to make his priorities clear, saying that Gayle could not ask for unconditional no-objection certificates (NOCs) to play domestic Twenty20 tournaments around the world and simultaneously make himself available for West Indies selection.

Gayle last played for West Indies in the 2011 World Cup, and has since taken part in Twenty20 leagues around the world, including the IPL, the Big Bash League in Australia and the BPL in Bangladesh. He has turned out for Jamaica in the domestic one-day and four-day competitions. He was left out of the WICB's 30-man squad for a fitness and training camp ahead of the home series against Australia. However, he was spotted in the stands during the second one-dayer against Australia on Sunday, in St Vincent.