West Indies end contract dispute

West Indies will be at full-strength for next month's tour to Australia after their board and the players settled a long-standing contracts dispute.The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) and the West Indies Players Association (WIPA) have agreed that players selected for the upcoming tour to Australia will sign the match/tour contract subject to the negotiations of Clause 5 which, when agreed, will be placed immediately into the contract.

This statement was part of a joint media release issued yesterday, more than 11 months since the impasse between the two parties began. Last November, another West Indies tour of Australia - for the VB Series - was nearly derailed after players selected for a pre-tour camp, on the advice of WIPA, refused to sign their match/tour contracts. In July, however, the West Indies tour of Sri Lanka was severely disrupted by the ongoing dispute, when a second-string team played in the Tests and tri-nation one-day series.

However, yesterday's joint statement gave the undertaking that the two parties had also agreed that the International Cricket Council (ICC) and the Federation of International Cricketers' Associations (FICA) will be asked to negotiate Clause 5 of the match/tour contract with a view to making a joint recommendation within ten days of commencing the negotiations. This joint recommendation will be binding on the parties. If there is no agreement after ten days, it is agreed that ICC and FICA will recommend an independent arbitrator. Should that exercise not be completed prior to the tour, it would continue and any financial benefits which may be agreed upon after the mediators' recommendation would be paid with effect from the date of the signing of the contract.

The statement ended by saying that the two parties also agreed that matters which remain to be settled with respect to all other outstanding issues, including the proposed retainer contracts, would be referred to representatives of their organisations for finalisation within an agreed time-frame. This agreement followed discussions between Ken Gordon, president of the WICB, and Dinanath Ramnarine, the president and chief executive officer of WIPA, last weekend.