Phone wars

Ramnaresh Sarwan: one of the players signed to Cable & Wireless © Getty Images

The showdown between the West Indies board and the players over contracts has been brewing for some time. If the clash has only just hit the headlines, the writing was on the wall from the moment the US$20 million three-year deal was signed at a hotel next to Lord's last July.

Cable & Wireless had sponsored West Indies cricket for 19 years, but in June, 2004 its three-year contract expired. The West Indies board had been rumoured to be about to get into bed with Digicel as far back as November 2003, and it did just that.

In the normal course of events, one sponsor giving way to another does not pose any major difficulties. But Digicel and Cable & Wireless are not only in direct competition, they are bitter rivals. In Caribbean brand terms, it was like Pepsi replacing Coke.

The further complication was that Brian Lara and seven other players in the squad touring England had personal deals with Cable & Wireless. While C&W were the official sponsors that was fine. But it didn't go down too well with Digicel. At the time, one board insider warned: "It could compromise the any contact negotiations and cause problems."

The press release heralding the new deal highlighted that Lara would be at the signing. Board officials and Digicel bigwigs stood around, delayed the big moment, but Lara never appeared. The WICB claimed that there was no problem and all was well, although even Digicel's chief executive was realistic enough to admit that Cable & Wireless "obviously wouldn't be too happy that we have lifted this sponsorship." Five weeks later Lara signed a four-year deal with Cable & Wireless.

Irish-based Digicel started a US$600 million mobile telecommunications investment in the Caribbean as recently as 2001, and according to some analysts it has already outstripped Cable & Wireless in the region.

For its part, Cable & Wireless wasn't sitting back. It committed as an official sponsor of the 2007 World Cup and started signing individual players to endorsement deals. Those brought the players into direct conflict with the board, whose contracts prevented them from representing any rivals to its major sponsors.

Although both the board and Cable & Wireless claimed that the split was mutual, there were suspicions that the Digicel offer was higher. Although Cable & Wireless had been sponsor for 19 years, as Teddy Griffith, the board's president, said simply: "Loyalty has a cost."

In the Caribbean, players generally earn more from endorsements than they do from salaries attached to board contracts. So that there would be a showdown was inevitable from the moment Digicel came on board, and if the WICB thought otherwise then it was deluding itself. The same sentiment applies if it expected its leading players to ditch a sponsor who had been good to them personally on the promise of jam tomorrow.