Meeting fails to break deadlock

A marathon meeting chaired by the Prime Minister of Grenada, Keith Mitchell, has failed to resolve the dispute between the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) and Cable & Wireless, which led to seven West Indian players, including Brian Lara and Ramnaresh Sarwan, being dropped. Teddy Griffith, the president of the WICB, had earlier instructed the selectors not to pick the players associated with C&W because the board found its sponsorship deal with Digicel compromised.

After a weary seven-hour meeting between the board, the players' representative body and the two telecommunications companies, Mitchell told reporters, "We can't say we've reached a complete solution, but we have made some considerable progress in terms of understanding the exact positions of the individual parties." There was no mention of any further meeting to break the impasse, although Mitchell did say that he would provide details of a possible solution on Thursday.

He told the Daily Nation, a West Indies newspaper: "I promised at the meeting that I will be in contact with my other prime-ministerial colleagues and by Thursday we will be in touch with all the parties to inform them as to how we see things and the exact solutions we intend to offer." But Mitchell divulged few details of the meeting that had taken place.

Mitchell also held negotiations late in 2004 to solve a dispute between the board and Cable & Wireless. After negotiations were finalised, the board later alleged that C&W did not stick to their part of the deal. Griffith, in his live televised statement on March 5, had said that Mitchell had been assured by C&W that they would not give the impression that the company was in any way related to West Indian cricket. Griffith said that this had been breached.

In a statement later, a C&W official said that they were prepared to make concessions in the interests of West Indian cricket, even though they had worked within legal boundaries. This was followed by a statement from Lara, in which he suggested compromises be made. He said that "a lot of sincere apologies - private apologies - would pave that way forward, and once an apology is offered, let the issue be dropped once and for all."

The statements by Lara and Cable & Wireless were seen as a positive step in the resolution of the dispute, but even if the seven players were picked for the home series against South Africa and Pakistan, there would still be a deadlock over pay between the board and the players' association, which has been vociferous in its message that the players need to be paid more.