Jimmy Adams: Ramnarine has saved many tours
(Republished from Jamaica Observer)He has often been accused of being too confrontational, aggressive and vindictive.
But describe the president and chief executive of the West Indies Players Association (WIPA), Dinanath Ramnarine in that manner in the presence of former Jamaica and West Indies captain James 'Jimmy' Adams and you would get a severe tongue-lashing. WIPA and the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) are locked in a dispute over contracts and payment for the region's international players and there is a view in the conference room of the WICB that Ramnarine is the main reason for the stand-off.
Not so, said Adams, now secretary of WIPA.
"No, he is not confrontational," was Adams' sharp response to the question posed to him in an interview with the Observer.
"Ramnarine certainly has the support of the WIPA executive. There are some of us who might think that he is not confrontational enough. I would say that quite a few of the tours in the last three years have only happened because of him, as he managed to convince others to go along with the tours.
"Sometimes when you look at some of the personal attacks that he has had to endure from various West Indies administrations, you want to feel sorry for him.
"A lot of times we have to deal with a mindset that really doesn't hold players in any high regard.
"At no point do I expect any players, or by extension a player's representative, to be approached in a manner that has been the typical way in which the Board has approached players in the time that I have been involved with cricket. If it takes somebody to say 'no, we will not be spoken to like that and we will not be treated like that', then I have no issues with that.
"We have never thought of engaging in the sort of personal attacks that he has had to endure over the past three years. But the organisation has survived, he has survived, and we think that the entity is stronger for having to deal with these kinds of issues. We don't think that the behaviour of this present Board will change, we wish it would, but it has toughened us as an organisation," Adams said, who is also technical director of the Jamaica Cricket Association.
Ramnarine once served on the present West Indies Board at the invitation of Board president, Julian Hunte. But when the honeymoon ended, Ramnarine walked away from the Board like a relieved groom who was not sure that he had made the right choice on his wedding day.
Before the dispute that has caused the originally selected West Indies team to boycott the opening Test match against Bangladesh in St Vincent & the Grenadines, Ramnarine stepped down as a non-voting director, sending a message that differences between WIPA and the WICB were irreparable.
Adams said that Ramnarine's decision to accept the invitation as a non-voting director of the WICB was not a unanimous endorsement by the WIPA executive.
"Again it was a split decision, a split vote by the WIPA executive as to whether or not we accept it," Adams said.
"What was difficult to accept was that WIPA was not invited to serve on the Board as a body. There is nothing in the constitution of the WICB that allows WIPA to have a representative on the Board of Directors. And so we had a fundamental issue with that, as he was invited as Dinanath Ramnarine, the individual and not as the representative of WIPA," Adams said.
For now, Adams, 41, is trying to make things easier for upcoming players so that they do not endure the same hardships that he had to undergo as a player, which some of the present players are experiencing.
"The Board often spreads misinformation and lies about issues, one of them being the last tour of England when WIPA was accused of wanting US$1.9 million of the US$2 million that the Board said it got for the tour which was not a part of the ICC's (International Cricket Council) Future Tours Programme.
"We don't even know if they got US$2 million. We have never seen the figures. They needed to address the sponsorship from Digicel and refused to do that.
"Ultimately, we know that if it comes to the point where we have to produce documents, we know who will be standing.
"We are trying to get the process sorted out for the new generation of players. Everytime we go to arbitration, it doesn't change their behaviour, but at least it vindicates our view that the foundation is not solid. Battle lines have been drawn. The players got fed up and they said to the Board, 'just call us when the contracts are ready'," he said.
Based upon Adams' prognosis, the issue of settling contracts before series begin and payment for players upon completion of the jobs they were contracted for, may not be resolved anytime soon.
"At the rate at which things are going, it looks unlikely that there will be a resolution soon. I would hope that there will be, but from where I stand, both parties are adamant. Players won't play without a contract and the Board won't negotiate unless the strike ends.
"We still have situations where Fidel Edwards for example will call and ask 'do I have to look after this injury?' We have to tell him that you don't have a contract, so what can we do. You can call the Board and beg them, but you are not entitled to anything, because you don't have a contract.
"A lot of these things were par for the course in my days of playing, but we don't want future generations of our cricketers going through the same crap that has been around for too long.
"I hope that we will be able to have a nice working relationship, wherein I might not like you, but I respect the structure that is in place. I don't think that a certain generation will like the administration. That is the day that we would like to see come sooner rather than later," Adams said.