Time for the board to get tough

One man and one branded shirt © Getty Images

As the bitter dispute which threatens to pull the rug from under the remains of Caribbean cricket rumbles on, the West Indies Cricket Board has a straightforward choice. Either it backs its sponsors, Digicel, and carries out its threat to suspend the seven players, or it tries to salvage some compromise which would allow them to play. Neither will be without short-term pain.

For all the politicking and comment, this whole dispute is about business. Digicel and Cable & Wireless are engaged in an acrimonious war for market-share in the region. C&W, which enjoyed a virtual telecommunications monopoly for decades, have been losing ground to Digicel since the latter arrived on the scene in 1999.

Although C&W had sponsored the WICB for nearly 20 years, when that deal came up for renewal it was trumped by the new kid on the block. At that stage the only winners were the WICB who stood to gain around $23 million for the five-year deal, a deal that C&W was, according to the board, unwilling to match.

But C&W did not take the rebuff lying down. At the time negotiations with Digicel started, C&W only had one player - Brian Lara - signed to a personal contract. Once it became clear that it was not going to match the Digicel offer, it signed the other six, a move many saw as the precursor of a confrontational strategy. And that is just what has happened.

The key individual here is Lara, not only because he is the team's best-known player but also because he is captain. In recent months Digicel representatives have been left fuming as he has come across as unwilling to be used, as the contract with the WICB stipulates, to help in their marketing. In Australia, things got so silly that one player had to be interviewed in jeans and a t-shirt because he would not wear Digicel-branded clothing. C&W, who sponsor the 2007 World Cup, have started using their contracted players in branded kit to promote its involvement in the tournament.

It would be like Michael Vaughan or Sourav Ganguly refusing to do promotional work for Vodafone or Sahara, their board's official sponsors, but popping up here, there and everywhere to endorse Orange or Jet Airways.

It is too easy to portray this as big business trying to dominate the little man, but that is not the case. This is ambush marketing in the true sense of the word. Not families being banned from taking the wrong cola into a match, but big business manipulating the system.

The players are not the little men either. They want the benefits that come from being a member of the West Indies team - and without that association most of them are fairly irrelevant - but also want to reap the rewards of their own deals. How many companies would pour millions into any team sponsorship if members of that team sprung up everywhere flogging its No. 1 rival?

The WICB is now at the crossroads. If it backs the players, Digicel might not withdraw entirely from the deal, but it would without doubt demand - and get - a significant reduction in the amount it pays to the board. Unlike other more affluent countries, there are precious few alternative sponsors ready to fill the breach. And cricket in the region is struggling to survive anyway, and even with the current the deal the board is battling to break even.

So the WICB has to take a stand against Lara and his colleagues. That might lead to Lara being stripped of the captaincy and jettisoned from the team entirely. But would that be such a bad thing?

The misdemeanours of a succession of West Indies players over the past decade are well documented, and the recent damning report on the tour of Australia was just the latest which gave succour to those who claimed that the team was effectively out of control. What is evident is that Lara, whose second stint as captain started in 2002, has been utterly incapable of restoring discipline to the side. Onand off-field performances have been dismal. In 22 matches under him, West Indies have won four (including two against Zimbabwe and Bangladesh) and lost 13.

If the board took a stand against Lara then it would be taking a massive gamble. It would be left hoping that some, if not all, of the remaining players who have personal contracts with C&W would back down and also that it could ride the storm of protests which would accompany such a move. There is also the possibility that the West Indies Players Association, which has not come out of this whole saga with much credit, might try to get the remaining players to strike in support of their team-mates.

But it would send a clear message out to present and future players. That playing for West Indies is not just about personal gain, it is also about pride. A post-Lara side would be in for some tough times as it rebuilt. But that has to be preferable to the mess into which cricket in the Caribbean now finds itself. And who's to say things would be any better with Lara on board?