richjob | Cricket Board, stupid cricket board.

This is the stupidest thing the West Indies Cricket Board ~~of Control~~ has done since the Kerry Packer World Series Cricket days.

"In an historic address broadcast across the region last night, president of the West Indies Cricket Board, Teddy Griffith, said the seven players who had sponsorships with Cable & Wireless would not be considered by the selectors for the series which begins on March 31.

Griffith said the players—Lara, Dwayne Bravo, Fidel Edwards, Chris Gayle, Ravi Rampaul, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Dwayne Smith—had repeatedly refused to disclose the non-financial terms of their Cable & Wireless deals with the WICB.

He said the board did not have alternative but to take this course of action.

The seven players won’t be selected for any team unless the board “can be satisfied that (their) contracts are unquestionably in the nature of individual contracts and contain no provisions which could be construed as passing off by the player of his connection with the West Indies team by attribution or by defining himself as a member of the team.”

The Jamaica Observer says it's about contracts and pay.

"But the endorsement issue apart, the West Indies Board, which has an accumulated deficit of US$8.1 million and is projecting a further loss of US$5.4 million in the current fiscal year, has been at loggerheads with the players over pay.

The WICB has proposed placing the region's top players on retainer contracts and has proposed a fee of US$79,200 a year for the most senior members of the team.

However, WIPA has insisted on a fee of US$135,000 for its most senior players, which it cast in the A-plus category. WIPA's demand, disclosed by Griffith last night, is more than 41 per cent higher than what the WICB proposed."

Now, that might be true. And the team's performance jumps around more than an unstable ECG. Mountain high, valley low.

However.

The team is still the poorest-paid in international cricket. Same issue that Packer used way back when.

Irony: the WICB homepage has a nice action shot of one B.C. Lara on its index page. (static element, too) Heh.

Double irony: the captain (who did not cover himself in glory sporting-wise or conduct-wise on the last tour of Australia) is the only captain since Clive Lloyd to actually win an international cricket tournament withh all the Test-playing countries. Last year.

History repeats itself.