Ramnarine Seeks Harmony with WICB

President and CEO of the West Indies Players' Association (WIPA) Dinanath Ramnarine has made a call for greater harmony between his body and the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), reports Joel Bailey in today's Newsday.

The ex-Windies leg-spinner extended the olive branch WIPA's Christmas and Appreciation Cocktail Reception in Trinidad & Tobago on Tuesday night.

In an address to the gathering, which also included T&T president George Maxwell Richards (a patron of WIPA), Ramnarine also urged sponsors to assist in the development, and growth of West Indies cricket

"I want to make a case for greater sponsorship of our youngsters, in or out of school, who keep this great and glorious game alive in the playgrounds, the streets, the beaches and the minds of our West Indian people," Ramnarine said.

He said the players' association will continue to work hard to secure the future of the game's only real asset, its players. "WIPA assists the development of young cricketers. We support the cricket professionals and we help to sustain the retired players."

"We keep hearing that West Indies cricket is at the crossroads and then we come to those crossroads and we find that we are still at the crossroads and all we can see ahead of us are more and more crossroads," Ramnarine said. "It is either that the road to success and the pathway to perfection are crossroads, or that the future of West Indies cricket is always at a perpetual and permanent crossroad because we lack the road-map or plan to how we get to the future from the present," Ramnarine stressed.

But, he added, "if we put the right programmes in place at the very beginning of the cricketing lives of our youth, the next time we get back on top of the world we will be there to stay."

The Trinidad Express also reports on the WIPA event, noting that Ramnarine came out to bat for young and aspiring cricketers in the region, saying they are the key to placing West Indies back at the pinnacle of world cricket.

"The more support players get when they are young, when they need help, when they need encouragement, when they need motivation, when they need nurturing, the more likely they are to succeed."

Ramnarine also said the West Indies Cricket Board could learn from the sponsors, who he described as "established businesses that have successfully and profitably crossed whatever crossroads they have encountered."

Meanwhile, a joint statement from the WICB and WIPA posted on the WindiesCricket.com Web site notes that the two parties have agreed to the Clause 5 proposal brokered by ICC/FICA negotiators.

"The negotiations will now centre on concluding the Memorandum of Understanding, contracts for Retained Players including player remuneration and Match and Tour contracts for players contracted outside of the Retained Players and the signing of the Collective Labour Agreement," the statement read.

Details on the new Clause 5 remains a closely guarded secret.

The Guyana Chronicle is running a CMC article with the averages from the recent three-Test series against Australia, noting that Brian Lara's 57.50 was tops for the West Indies.

All-rounder Dwayne Bravo finished second in the aggregates with 214 runs at an average of 53.50, despite missing the first Test in Brisbane. Denesh Ramdin finished with 171 runs at 34.20.

Bravo topped the West Indies bowling averages with eight wickets at 25.12 while Corey Collymore and Fidel Edwards also finished with eight wickets each.

In a post-series analysis for Wisden Cricinfo, Vaneisa Baksh found some positives from the losing West Indies side but her assessment of Shivnarine Chanderpaul's captaincy was blunt and scathing

" Chanderpaul was typically wooden and unimaginative, and this was especially pronounced in the final Test when the come-from-behind thesis threatened to be proven. Getting Australia at a promising 295 for 8, largely due to the spirited and intelligent performance of Dwayne Bravo that yielded six wickets, Chanderpaul remained stuck in a manifestly unworkable game plan that allowed Michael Hussey his second century, and removed any prospect of a Windies win," Baksh wrote.

"Will it be the last straw for his captaincy? Difficult to say as it is still unclear what criteria was used by the selectors in the first place. His vice captain, Ramnaresh Sarwan, never seemed motivated or focused enough to play carefully," she added.

Baksh also called on the WICB to "find some aggressive ways" to pursue the "unacceptably high number of batting casualties" that affected the West Indies side.

The Barbados Nation's Haydn Gill provides some thoughts from Barbados national coach Hendy Springer in the aftermath of the drawn first round Carib Beer-sponsored first class match against Guyana.

"It is a match we should have won, but Narsingh Deonarine batted really, really well. You must give all credit to him for turning the game around," Springer said. ""I am pleased with the way the team performed in their first outing. A lot of positives have come out of the game...The pitch was a very, very good batting surface. You had to dig deep and bowl really hard and I am quite impressed with our bowlers for making the effort."