Regional cricketers fighting for better pay

TRINIDAD and Tobago leg-spinner Dinanath Ramnarine is querying the West Indies Cricket Board’s (WICB) relationship with the West Indies Players Association (WIPA), which he currently heads.

The 26-year-old Ramnarine also wants the WICB to deal more effectively with two major issues —- full compensation for players injured during tours and an increase in the salaries for players during the regional First-Class season. Ramnarine, who took over as president of the WIPA a year ago, vented his feelings during a local televised interview on Sunday. “We’ve made several requests to meet with the West Indies Cricket Board,” said the Alescon Comet spinner, “but we’ll finally meet this Thursday to negotiate for the Australian series.” The issue of players’ fees will be a hot topic during the discussions, he said.

The West Indies players, led by then captain Brian Lara and deputy Carl Hooper, staged a strike at the Heathrow Airport in London a week before their ill-fated 1998 tour of South Africa while the present squad, during their pre-World Cup camp in Antigua in January, were at odds with the Board over the allocation of sponsorship funds. The players even boycotted a pre-arranged media conference hours after the WICB announced that the LNM Group, the Indian steel manufacturers which is a parent company of Caribbean Ispat Limited (based in Trinidad), will be the team’s official sponsors during the World Cup.

Ramnarine, who was in Antigua at that time, revealed that he learnt about the deal the night before it was announced at a press conference at the Hilton Trinidad and was in total disagreement with the package offered. With regards to the players’ compensation for tour-ending ailments, the WIPA boss, in total disgust, said that players injured during the latter stages of a trip receive little or no redress from the Board. Furthermore, Ramnarine said the players receive a salary of US $195 (non-Test player) and US $320 (Test player) per regional match, therefore his organisation is “looking at an increase of 20 percent for the non-Test player and 10 percent for the Test player.” Stressing that the First-Class fees had not been increased for the past 12 years, he declared he “intends to take some form of action on the failure of the WICB to actively negotiate with the WIPA.”