'Bring Digicel Contract to Arbitration'

The West Indies Players' Association (WIPA) is demanding that the WICB's master sponsorship contract with Digicel be included in the arbitration proceedings to determine whether it violates the rights of players.

In a strongly-worded statement in which the WICB is accused of being "tyrannical and despotic," the players' association said the arbitration process will only be fair if the terms of the Digicel deal are closely examined.

According to published reports, the Digicel contract gives the WICB until June 30, 2005 to produce "clean" players without any advertising contracts with a competitive product.

A section of the Digicel/WICB contract reads:

"The WICB shall use its best endeavours to ensure and procure that by June 30, 2005, none of the players or team officials is a party or subject to any contract or arrangement for the provision of promotional, marketing, advertising services or which any licence or right or otherwise permits any competitor, or any third party in relation to any competitive product . . . to use his name, image, likeness, reputation, autograph and/or photograph directly or indirectly in any promotional, marketing or advertising..."

FULL TEXT OF WIPA STATEMENT:

WIPA has tried, up to the very last minute, to resolve the present impasse affecting the first Test Match in Guyana. Our experience has been painful; in essence it was similar to tilting at windmills, as the WICB, unanswerable and accountable to no one, but adorned with the monopoly of controlling Test cricket in the West Indies, with impunity kept shifting its positions.

Today, mere hours before the first ball is bowled, the Board has written to indicate that the real offence of the seven affected players was that they breached a prior match tour contract when they signed their admittedly individual endorsement contracts with Cable and Wireless, by signing without first securing the approval of the Board.

Assuming but not admitting that that was the case, the WICB in effect proceeded to impose the penalty of banning the players, a penalty that is self-evidently oppressive and unconscionable, and moreover illegitimate in relation to the purported offence, since it exceeds the maximum penalty as prescribed by the Board?s own contract. Furthermore, as the players were given no opportunity to defend themselves, not only did the WICB not follow the rules of natural justice before coming to its unilateral determination that the players were in breach of the relevant match tour contract, it also imposed a penalty that was not provided for in that contract.

Additionally, and illogically, the WICB in its latest letter to WIPA, now calls on the players to cure that alleged breach, notwithstanding that the match tour contract expired since July last year and is therefore no longer in existence.

WIPA has come to the conclusion that we are facing a tyrannical and despotic WICB that has suspended its discretion, jettisoned all reasoning and is hellbent at all costs to do the bidding of its sponsor. In fact, the Board was prepared to sacrifice West Indies cricket and the development of a successful team on the altar of commercial expediency.

For themselves, the players have taken the struggle as far as they can but now face overwhelming pressure including death threats, and threats from the WICB never to play again, threats and intimidation from sponsors and pressure from the highest political levels within the length and breadth of the Caribbean community. The players understand that no help is coming their way from these quarters. The Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on cricket after their positive intervention has all but withdrawn from the scene. Other political leaders have tried to intervene but have met with no success.

We are satisfied that we have exposed the machinations of the Board and, its total disrespect for cricketers, the West Indian people, and even Caricom; and how it runs West Indian cricket. We have forced the Board to agree to the process of arbitration. If this process however is to be fair, we insist that the Digicel contract must be subjective to arbitration to see whether it violates the rights of players. We reiterate our call for a Commission of Inquiry into the administration of West Indian cricket in general and specifically the process by which the contract with Digicel was entered into.

The players now have no other recourse but to call on the West Indian people to help them reclaim their cricket from the clutches of the despotic WICB and its commercial bosses.