WIPA put forward issues for arbitration

THE WEST Indies Players’ Association (WIPA) say that both the actions of the players and the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) must be examined if another round of arbitration in the cricket impasse takes place. In a release issued on Friday, WIPA said they were ready to participate in further arbitration and laid out a number of issues that needed to be examined.

One of these issues, WIPA noted, was whether the WICB was justified in coming to their decision that the seven players with Cable and Wireless contracts had breached clause 1 k of the match/tour contracts. Further, the players’ body also wants examined the WICB’s contract with Digicel and if the terms of that contract constitute “an interference with the personal proprietary rights of players, are oppressive, are in restraint of trade and on enforcement capable of inducing breach of contract.” WIPA have also put forward for discussion whether the decision by the WICB to rule the seven players with Cable and Wireless personal endorsement contracts ineligible for selection was not “harsh and oppressive and unreasonable in all of the circumstances.”

In addition, the WIPA release raised the question of if ruling the players in question ineligible for selection was an action provided for in the then existing match/tour contract for the alleged breach. WIPA, headed by president and CEO Dinanath Ramnarine, indicated that they had also written to Grenadian Prime Minister Keith Mitchell, chairman of the Caricom Prime Ministerial Sub Committee on cricket, to put forward these proposals. The association also clarified their position on Ramnaresh Sarwan and Chris Gayle who earlier this week announced through their lawyer that they were relinquishing their personal endorsement contracts with Cable and Wireless in order to make themselves eligible for selection. “WIPA are not involved in the corporate war evidently being waged on the battlefield of West Indian cricket, and is not and has never been involved in taking sides in that issue,” the release stated.

“We believe that the respective commercial giants are well able to handle their own concerns.” They added: “We are satisfied that we have established, through the first recourse to arbitration, that there is a distinction between individual and team rights. What players wish to do with their individual rights is a matter of personal choice. We are concerned, however, with any attempt to fetter that choice by whatever means be they directly or indirectly.”