West Indies: Retainers May Be Revived (6 December 1998)

6 December 1998

West Indies: Retainers May Be Revived

By Haydn Gill

Retainer contracts for leading Caribbean cricketers could soon be on the cards again.

That's according to West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) chief executive officer Stephen Camacho.

In an effort to keep top West Indies players in the Caribbean when they are not touring, the WICB first offered contracts to 23 leading players ahead of the 1997 regional season.

Lack of funding, due largely to tardiness on the part of CARICOM governments, resulted in no contracts being offered the following year.

The WICB, however, is now reporting some encouraging news.

"We are at present looking at the entire concept of the retainer contract scheme and I think something positive will be said in the near future," Camacho told reporters following Thursday's launch of the 1999 Busta Cup first-class competition.

He revealed that the WICB did not finance the initial contracts on its own, and went on to explain why things fell through the second year.

"We haven't received the full funding from the governments that we have asked for, and as such, under how we envisaged the retainer contracts scheme to run, we have not been able to implement it," he said.

A few months ago, Grenada Prime Minister Keith Mitchell expressed disappointment that most of the governments had failed to keep their promise to help with the contracts.

WICB president Pat Rousseau declined to disclose names of the tardy ones.

"Most of them (governments) have paid up the first year and I think one or two have paid the second year," he said.

"I don't even know the list off-hand and I don't think that's for us to reveal. I feel that information should come from the CARICOM Secretariat."

The WICB boss also pointed out that there could be some difficulties over possible contracts for 1999 and 2000.

"We're going to look at ways of getting some system into play because I think it is very important for what we are doing," he said.

"In 1999, the World Cup takes the players almost into the middle of the county season, so that's going to affect some of them. The following year we are touring England, so the top players won't have county contracts."

When the retainer contracts were first offered, it was believed that they ranged from US$15,000 to US$30,000.

Those sums did not include fees for Test matches and One-Day Internationals in the Caribbean.

Source :: The Barbados Nation (https://www.nationnews.com/)