Jimmy Adams: WICB adversarial, short sighted

This comes as both organizations are set to attend an arbitration hearing in Barbados tomorrow (Wednesday) to determine if the current England tour is outside of the ICC's Future Tours Programme, and would therefore be subject to negotiations.

Adams feels that WIPA has had to stand on legal ground too often, all in an effort to bring the management of West Indies cricket into the modern era. "There is still a lot of work to be done," he said.

Interestingly, the tag 'adversarial' has been often levelled at WIPA and in particular, at its President, the former West Indies leg spinner Dinanath Ramnarine. The WIPA Secretary has his own opinion on that. He explained that in the past, WIPA was ineffective.

"WIPA has existed long before [Dinanath] Ramnarine became involved in WIPA and yet, a lot of the situations facing players hadn't changed," Adams stated.

In addition, Adams said that members of the past WIPA Executives did not serve the best interest of both senior and junior players. This is one of the areas he feels that Brian Lara has left a legacy. "He was one of the first really senior players, a global superstar, who many times stood up for the younger players. It was sort of a breakaway from what the traditional senior players had done, and what some of them had done in their roles with WIPA," Adams added.

According to the WIPA Secretary, for many years, the WICB was happy to play the "divide and conquer role."

"They would keep the senior players happy, and they wouldn't look after the junior players who were just happy to be involved," he said.

Most recently, Lara refused to play in the home series against South Africa in 2005, in solidarity with fellow players Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bravo and Ramnaresh Sarwan, who had been barred from playing because of personal endorsement contracts held with former team sponsor Cable & Wireless.

Adams said that he is in frequent dialogue with the WIPA President. "We discuss a lot of issues facing the players and West Indies cricket. We talk about the best way to go about dealing with these issues, and the best way to go about dealing with a cricket board which at times, in my view, tends to be a little bit adversarial and short sighted," he stated.

The former West Indies captain, who played 54 Tests and 127 ODIs from 1992 to 2001, has been Secretary of WIPA for just over one year. Other members of the executive are Wavell Hinds – Vice President; Ian Bradshaw – Treasurer; and Daren Ganga – Assistant Secretary.

Adams said that previous members of WIPA's Executive were "very anti-confrontational. I am not saying it is good or bad thing. It was just an observation of their personality."

The WIPA Secretary said that if WIPA has to stand up on legal ground to improve the management of West Indies cricket, "then I am confident that in generations to come, they will look back and say it was necessary and it was good that somewhere along the line, WIPA moved away from being a pretty ineffectual name, to being an entity that served a purpose," Adams said.

Adams believes that WIPA has been forced, out of necessity, to match the WICB's approach. "I'd be the first to say that I think that an adversarial approach is necessary now, because I strongly believe that too much of the abuse has gone on for too long," he said.

When it was suggested that "abuse" was a strong word to use, Adams responded by saying "when you exploit players for as long as the Board has, both Ramnarine and myself are dead set against it continuing for another generation."

"If at the end of the day, the most that comes out of it is people say that you're adversarial, then I think both of us are prepared to accept that tag, if we can spare another generation of young cricketers going through what we had to go through in our relationship with the Board," he added.