WI players, Board need each other

IT is a naive thought, I know, but I wonder whether, in all the 14 hours they spent haggling across the table at the Hilton Trinidad a couple of Friday nights ago, Roger Brathwaite and Dinanath Ramnarine ever turned to each other and said: “You know, we need you as much as you need us.” Or, “West Indies cricket needs us both for that, after all, is the very basis for our existence.” I think not, for it is a self-evident truth that the two chief operatives of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) and the West Indies Players’ Association (WIPA), and their advisers, seem to have overlooked in their latest spat over players’ contracts —  as have their predecessors in the many others of the recent past.

Instead, a distrust has developed between them that is most obvious in the language and tone of their public statements. It makes conflict resolution virtually impossible. It goes back more than quarter-century, to the imbroglio over Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket (WSC), perhaps even further. When the players undertook their week-long strike at Heathrow Airport six years ago prior to their ill-fated tour of South Africa, Hilary Beckles, pro vice-chancellor and principal of the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) and a learned chronicler of West Indies cricket, wrote: “They (the players) do not believe, in general, that the board considers itself their agent; rather they agree to a man that it is their enemy.” It is as true now as it was then.

The deadlock Brathwaite, Ramnarine and their respective teams reached that early morning in Port-of-Spain led 16 of the 25 players the WICB invited to the camp to prepare for the upcoming Australian tour to reject the terms of the offered contract. They were so advised by the WIPA on the grounds that the conditions outlined failed to recognise the players’ personal endorsement rights, in this case with Cable and Wireless, the former long-serving sponsor of West Indies cricket. The WICB countered that the relevant clause, No 5, was to protect the interests of Digicel, their new sponsors and C and W’s bitter business rival, and was non-negotiable. They  announced that those players who did not sign their invitations to the camp by the given deadline had made themselves unavailable for selection.

In other words, it was prepared to pick new, lesser players and send whatever team it could raise to Australia. It did not require a university degree in logic to work out that it was a lose-lose situation. Without the international exposure provided only by participation in the West Indies team, the value of any players’ personal endorsements, for C and W or anyone else, would soon be worthless. And the same would be true of a West Indies team denuded of their finest, most identifiable individuals, a point emphasised by the noises coming out of Australia at such a prospect for their VB Series. Already, the Australians had eliminated a planned series of four Tests with the West Indies to accommodate a tour of India. They would not need much persuasion to cancel the One-Day tour as well.

So we would have the top West Indies players (and some not so top) at home twiddling their thumbs, or trying to procure a late signing with a South African province or Australian state, and the depleted West Indies team shunned by hosts not prepared to accept seconds. Surely these were compelling enough reasons for the two parties to come to an agreement on their own, without having to seek the help of politicians, as they have eventually done. But history has shown that there is too much bad blood between them for reasoned compromises. The fact that Digicel was prepared to shell out US$40 million in a five-year deal with the WICB and that Cable and Wireless would sign up a group of stars of the future (regardless of whether it was acting as spoiler or not) is at least encouraging evidence that West Indies cricket, for all their decline, remains an attractive option for sponsors.

Sandals and the LNM Group, the international steel company with an operation in Trinidad, kept the faith with their financial backing of the team to England in the summer. Carib Beer remains on board for the first-class season. Yet it is not difficult to imagine what they, and others looking to place their promotional money into sport, make of the repeated rumpuses that have become such an integral part of West Indies cricket. As it is, Digicel’s interest has blown up in their face even before they had a chance to place their logo on the team’s uniforms.  Prior to last year’s World Cup, the WICB and the WIPA both felt obliged to apologise to the LNM Group over their embarrassing public scrapping as to who should get what from the company’s sponsorship.

A few weeks later, Carib, in their first year behind the regional first-class tournament, had its semi-finals disrupted by a One-Day players’ strike that, even indirectly, it had nothing to do with. It is little wonder that the marketing department could find no sponsor for the regional One-Day tournament in October after Red Stripe packed up their empties and left. To compound the folly of the latest stand-off, it has come at precisely the time when the West Indies at last have something to showcase, the ICC Champions Trophy, and when a new coach has come aboard, with Sir Garry Sobers finally and officially engaged to lend a hand.

The euphoria and the confidence engendered by the remarkable triumph in England in September have been rapidly dissipated by squabbling over the coach’s belated appointment (another example of the ineptness of the WICB, said Ramnarine), the late payment of players’ fees and now this serious stalemate.  The lawyers and the trade unionists are having a field day arguing over the legal and industrial relations issues. In the meantime, everyone else remains dumbfounded that two organisations with one common goal could so repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot. Much more and the wound would be at the other extremity of the body. It could be fatal.

(Tony Cozier is the leading cricket writer and broadcaster in the West Indies)