Digicel to sponsor West Indies team

Digicel, a mobile-phone company, have decided to offer unprecedented incentives in an attempt to drag West Indian cricket out of the morass of mediocrity in which it has been marooned for much of the past decade. The new sponsorship deal will see the players awarded bonuses for victories against top-notch opposition, and comes soon after the West Indies hit rock-bottom, losing at home to England for the first time in 36 years.

"We wanted to ensure that we achieved the best performances on the field," said Roger Braithwaite, chief executive of the West Indies Cricket Board. "We wanted to move to a situation where players were getting rewards," he added, according to a news report on the BBC Sport website. "There was a feeling that not going down that road had perhaps impacted on the side."

The Board and the players are currently negotiating the terms of the agreement, though Braithwaite ruled out the possibility of fines for below-par performances. It is expected, however, that the team will get bonus payments for victories againt any side ranked higher in the ICC's Test or one-day championship table. That means just about any victory will be lucrative, with the West Indies abysmally placed at eighth in both tables.

The agreement will come into effect next January, just before the team takes on Australia. The five-year deal with Digicel is worth over £10.9million over the next half-decade, and it means that Cable & Wireless, the previous sponsors whose deal expired recently, are out of the picture.