Simmer Down

Once again WICB bungling has brought West Indies cricket into crisis, a crisis that could have been managed or even avoided with only a small amount of foresight.

As sweet a deal as the Digicel sponsorship is, by leaping into bed with former sponsor Cable & Wireless' archrival, while knowing full well that it would place several key players in a difficult position, the WICB has set up a game of chicken between itself and the players' association, with the players standing on the road between them.

Cable & Wireless has been the primary sponsor of the West Indies cricket team for the better part of two decades. In 2003, C&W, with the knowledge and cooperation of the board, worked out an endorsement contract with Brian Lara, which included an option to renew. C&W then expanded their player endorsement policy and signed up several others, including Ramnaresh Sarwan, Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bravo, Omari Banks, Fidel Edwards, Ravi Rampaul and Dwayne Smith.

Cable & Wireless says the WICB was fully apprised of those deals as well, a claim not disputed by officials from the WICB.

While all of this was going on, WICB entered into talks with Digicel. The negotiations drove the price up beyond what C&W was willing to pay, and they opted instead to spend their advertising budget on the ICC's World Cup 2007 package and on individual endorsements deals with several key West Indies players.

Having made their bed, the board had no option but to lie in it, but they did a sloppy job of tying up the loose ends. In the retainer contract they put to WIPA, they offered to buy out any player deal that would conflict with any major WICB sponsor.

So, in theory, the WICB's original proposal was to buyout the C&W contracted players, an offer that was accepted by WIPA during the negotiations.

Then, two weeks ago, the board did an about-face on the agreed-upon buyout, and opted instead to try to bully the players into signing over their rights.

One can only assume that they failed to get Digicel's buy-in for their buy-out and the new sponsor applied some pressure on the board to prevent its newly acquired rights from being diluted by the C&W players. Cable & Wireless, not surprisingly, is standing by its endorsement deals with those players and is not about to give them up.

West Indies cricket now finds itself at an impasse, with the board looking like it will shut out any players who do not bow before it, and the players' Association ordering all its members not to sign the new contract. Meanwhile the players are trapped between the two belligerents and the contracted players are in an impossible legal situation. For their part, Digicel and Cable & Wireless don't seem inclined to stand down either, and the rhetoric is heating up.

There are lots of guilty parties here, but the most guilty is the board for adopting such a cavalier approach to what was an inevitable crisis. They have a moral obligation, if not a legal one, to the players that they allowed to sign these contracts. Currently there is no win-win solution -- someone has to lose, and it is increasingly apparent that that someone will end up being the players, who are the least guilty party.

As it stands, Brian Lara and the others are C&W islands in a Digicel sea. However, it is worth noting that when the World Cup rolls around in 2007, the shoe will be on the other foot, and it will be Digicel who will be drowning under the C&W storm surge. This should give both companies reason to consider their actions now, and the repercussions they will have in three years.

Surely there is enough incentive for the four parties to sit down, possibly with a mediator, and hammer out operating terms to allow everyone to function in this awkward environment. At such a crucial stage of the rebuilding process the very last thing that the WICB needs is a disruption like this and renewed public scrutiny. WIPA has an obligation to its members to make sure that they can make a living, and the two sponsors could easily find themselves viewed with hostility by the very market they are fighting to control. Everyone has a clear stake in getting on with business.

The combatants need to face the fact that they are stuck in this mess together, and the only thing to do is to lay out ground rules to make this work. The C&W players must be allowed to honour their agreements with their sponsor, while at the same time fulfilling their part of the WICB's obligation to Digicel. The ICC sponsorship guidelines (PDF file) already limit in rather clear terms how much exposure C&W can have on the field (essentially, none) but that should not prevent C&W from gaining the visibility it seeks in other ways, such as Lara comforting hurricane victims or Sarwan smiling broadly on a billboard in downtown Kingston.

Individual player endorsements are a vital part of the future of West Indies cricket. More than anything, they provide the incentive for young athletes to consider cricket as their sport of choice, and to excel at it. WIPA and the WICB must work together to ensure that there are clear and reasonable guidelines under which player sponsorships can operate, so that West Indies cricket never again finds itself in this situation.

In the words of one Caribbean statesman:

Simmer down: oh, control your temper!
Simmer down: for the battle will be hotter;
Simmer down: and-a you won't get no supper.