Win over sponsors, WICB chief tells players

Donald Peters, the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) chief executive, has urged the national team to "start winning in order to attract sponsors". The WICB failed to get sponsors for the domestic one- and four-day competitions this season, but Peters reaffirmed that the board had enough funds of its own to cover the expenses.

"I have already told the West Indies cricketers that they must start winning in order to help us in attracting sponsors," Peters told the Trinidad Guardian. "When this happens everybody wants to come on board and this would put us in a better position given the current financial crisis around the world.

"I am happy to announce that this money being used to run the regional first-class series is not from a loan but from our resources that we have put away, in order to keep our cricket going," he said. "This will tell you that the board is a well-financed and well-run unit and is not being mismanaged. We understand the current financial crisis and we know that sponsorships are difficult but we are going to make that extra effort to keep things going smoothly."

The WICB had estimated an expenditure of around US$1.5 million to organise the tournaments. KFC and Carib Beer had been the previous sponsors of the WICB Cup (the one-day tournament) and the four-day competition respectively, but this year the board failed to get "significant sponsorships". "Even at the level of the board's executive, we will be looking to cut costs and even if it means having less meetings and more cricket, then we will do just that," he said.

Peters, though, is confident of a turnaround for the 2010 season. "I have been in talks with a number of people and I am optimistic that next season we would have a good sponsor on board," he said. "When you get sponsorship you have to be careful of what you are allowing. Sometimes you get a sponsor and they give you a certain amount of money and when you advertise and construct billboards and all these things, the money is spent there. When situations like these arise, I say to myself it's better I go it alone."

The WICB's relationship with Digicel, "the primary sponsor of West Indies cricket", has hardly been rosy, and the rights row ahead of the Stanford Super Series has also put into doubt financial backing from Allen Stanford, the Antigua-based billionaire.