Ramnarine launches stinging attack

Text of the letter in full

The war of words between the West Indies Players' Association (WIPA) and the West Indies board (WICB) grew increasingly bitter with a stinging broadside from Dinanath Ramnarine, WIPA's president, to Roger Brathwaite, his opposite number on the board.

In a lengthy letter to Brathwaite, Ramnarine opened by expressing WIPA's "profound disgust, but not surprise" at the board's decision to select an alternative group of players for the Sri Lanka tour and rarely lets up thereafter.

Ramnarine stated that on June 29 he believed that "we had arrived at substantial agreement on the matters in dispute," and that on the following day several attempts to continue discussions were made but that Brathwaite was unobtainable. That afternoon the board announced the selection of replacement players.

Ramnarine was also very critical of the way the A team had been handled. "WIPA cannot but come to the position that the board had all along intended to use the presence of the A team as a bargaining chip against WIPA. All the correspondence and the apparent consensus that was emerging as a result of the correspondence between the parties was, as is now apparent, merely a tactic on your part to provide the time necessary to obtain, by means fair or foul, the agreement of enough members of the A team to play the senior-team tour."

The issue of sponsorship income is also dealt with at length, with Ramnarine claiming that although he thought the matter was being discussed, he was then verbally informed on June 30 that the board's position had changed as "we have another team".