WICB amend contentious Clause 5

The WICB has also submitted an amendment to Clause 5 of the Match/Tour Contract, which serves to make clear its position with respect to individual-player endorsements. This right was always contained in the contract but this new clause seeks to clarify that issue.

The new clause 5 (b) reads: "The WICB acknowledges that individual Players have the sole and exclusive right to enter into their own individual commercial contracts granting similar image rights as in Clause 5(a) other than as a West Indian Player and subject to Clause 5.1 and Clause 5.2."

Those clauses, 5.1 and 5.2, speak to intellectual property usage rights and player promotional obligations to the WICB and its team sponsors respectively.

In its letter dated July 25, signed by WICB Chief Executive Officer, Roger Brathwaite, to WIPA President and Chief Executive Officer, Dinanath Ramnarine, the Board proposed a four-step process towards resolving the impasse.

The first step calls for the adjudication process with respect to Clause 1k of the Match/Tour Contracts to be completed by Mr Justice Adrian Saunders, the adjudicator appointed last November by the CARICOM Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on Cricket.

Step two will see the submission of Clause 5 of the Sri Lanka Match/Tour Contract to Mr Justice Saunders for a binding determination after completion of the first step.

The third step envisages the two parties meeting with a professional mediator first to agree what is to be mediated and then to discuss the differences, identify the issues separating the parties and agree a mechanism for resolution.

Any agreed questions that remain for adjudication after the mediation process would then be brought back to Mr Justice Saunders as the fourth and final step.

It is the WICB’s intention that this process will be undertaken while the tour proceeds as originally planned.

In its letter, the Board reminded WIPA that there had been attempts to put in place a mechanism by which a fixed percentage of the net annual Digicel sponsorship of US $3.375 million would be paid to the players through the life of the five-year contract. This, the WICB said, would remove the unsatisfactory manner in which the level of sponsorship fees is decided upon for individual tours. There has however been no agreement between the parties on the fixed percentage.

The Board maintained that it could not afford the proposal put forward by WIPA for the tour to Sri Lanka but in the interest of reaching a settlement it was prepared to negotiate the matter further.