West Indies Cricket Board in dilemma over one-day dates

The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) is engaged in a delicate balancing act to try to accommodate a showpiece limited-overs match between Asia and the Rest of the World, organised by the International Cricket Council (ICC) chairman Jagmohan Dalmiya, in Bangladesh April 8. Because of a clash of dates, it threatens to dislocate the WICB's international season and the start of the subsequent tours of England by Zimbabwe and the West Indies.

The match, the highlight of a so-called Cricket Carnival Week in Dhaka, has been scheduled in the middle of the previously arranged triangular Cable & Wireless series of One-Day Internationals in the Caribbean involving the West Indies, Pakistan and Zimbabwe.

To give the ICC event the required status, Dalmiya has asked the WICB and the other relevant boards to interrupt the tournament for a week to allow their players to be available for selection. He has suggested the WICB organise a series of special SuperMax matches in the interim.

The ICC would have to compensate the WICB for the disruption and for the expenses incurred in staging substitute matches and putting up and paying players. Negotiations are still taking place to see if some compromise arrangement can be made, WICB chief executive Stephen Camacho said yesterday. It involves not only us and the ICC but also the Pakistan Board, the Zimbabwe Board and the ECB [England board].

Camacho said if there was a break in the itinerary, Zimbabwe had requested a three-day, first-class match against a representative side. If the season is simply put back a week, it would carry the triangular tournament to April 23 and the West Indies? later Test series against Pakistan to May 29, eliminating the planned opening England tour matches for Zimbabwe, against Hampshire April 27, and the West Indies? opening match of their England tour against Worcestershire, long since May 31-June 3.

ECB chief executive Tim Lamb said from his office at Lord?s yesterday that the ECB fully supported the concept of the Dhaka event, involving all the ICC?s smaller, associate members, to further popularise the game around the world, But, he added, the ECB was very concerned indeed that it should not result in any disruption to the agreed tour schedules for Zimbabwe and the West Indies.

Our programme was settled months ago and any late change would have an obvious financial impact on the counties concerned, Hampshire and Worcestershire, he said. It is a tradition that Worcestershire host the opening tour match and the West Indies are a drawing card. They have already made commitments to sponsors and have arranged corporate hospitality.

Lamb said he had heard nothing about the situation in the West Indies since last Thursday but expected to be updated at an ICC meeting in Singapore next week. The West Indies Players' Association (WIPA) has not been consulted on, or even informed of, any possible change of schedule, chief executive David Holford said yesterday. But this is not unusual.

Normally, we are told of such things when they are a fait accompli, said Holford, the former Test all-rounder, selector and team manager. Holford explained that the WIPA have a representative on the WICB's cricket committee but deciding on itineraries was not part of the cricket committee's responsibilities.