Howard doesn't expect strife among players

No internal strife within the team, says the Windies manager © Getty Images

In spite of a grasp of human nature and the early evidence, Tony Howard, the West Indies manager, does not anticipate internal strife within the team once the current dispute between the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) and the West Indies Players' Association (WIPA) is settled.

"Several years ago when a similar event occurred in the Kerry Packer series I didn't hear of any lingering things and I don't think it should be so now," the team manager said, referring to the decision by captain Clive Lloyd and the leading players to participate in Packer's World Series Cricket (WSC) while a depleted West Indies Test team toured India and Sri Lanka in 1978-79.

Howard described the rejection of the WICB tour contracts by ten of the 13 players initially chosen for the current tour of Sri Lanka as "an individual decision". "Some chose to [sign], some not," he said in an interview with the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) here. "As far as I'm concerned that's the end of that. Once they become available again, it's a matter for people to decide if they want to play or if they don't want to play."

Early signs are that it might not be "the end of that".

Dinanath Ramnarine, the WIPA's president and chief executive, has openly questioned the position of Shivnarine Chanderpaul, the captain, who has consistently decided to sign the match-tour contract since the row erupted last November prior to the tour of Australia for the VB Series.

"It's rather unfortunate to have the players making a principled stand and the captain of that side going in a different direction," he said. "It tells a story."

It is not difficult to interpret what Ramnarine believes that story to be. While none of the players has made any comment on the issue, the divide between those who chose to join the Test team here as replacements from the A team, simultaneously on tour of Sri Lanka, and those who turned down Howard's offer to do so quickly materialised.

Daren Ganga and 12 of the other members of the A team originally issued a signed statement stating they would not make themselves available "in [a] show of solidarity for our senior members until all matters are resolved between the WICB and the WIPA".

Six then reneged and did agree to join the senior team for the two Tests and the triangular series of one-day internationals with Sri Lanka and India. It immediately divided players who were team-mates only a day earlier, some of them from the same territory, and caused obvious resentment. The two squads were moved into separate hotels, the seniors checking into the Taj Sumudra while the A players were transferred to the Trans Asia.

There was an opportunity for the A players to attend the third day of the first Test and for the Test men to watch Sunday's A match but it wasn't taken by either. Howard dismissed suggestions that he had come to Sri Lanka early to put pressure on the A team players to join his squad.

"I don't see that at all," he said. "My job was simply to address the team as a group, which I did. I offered each of them the same availability to sign if they so desired. Some of them did, some of them didn't."

It is the fissure between those who did and those who didn't that has the potential of undermining team spirit when they again come together in the name of West Indies - or even of their individual territories.