PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – West Indies Players Association president, Dinanath Ramnarine said yesterday his organisation would welcome the intervention of CARICOM governments in a bid to end the long simmering dispute with the West Indies Cricket Board.
“The answer is yes,” Ramnarine said in a radio interview here Thursday.
The two bodies have been at odds over issues relating to players’ contracts and the latest row resulted in many of the top West Indies players, including former captain Chris Gayle, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Dwayne Bravo boycotting the Bangladesh series and missing out on the Champions Trophy scheduled for later this month.
Former Commonwealth Secretary General Sir Shridath Ramphal, who was appointed mediator, said earlier this week that he had failed and urged cricket followers in the Caribbean not to despair because “cricket is in our regional genes; it cannot be lost”.
Ramnarine said that the WIPA executive and the players would be meeting in Guyana over the weekend to discuss the way forward.
“After our meeting over the weekend we are going to be very clear as to how we proceed going forward given the action taken by the board.
“You had a situation where even in the mediation they were talking about let us settle A, B, C, and D and we will consider the players for the championship [in South Africa]. To me they had absolutely no intention whatsoever of reaching an agreement,” Ramnarine said.
Guyana’s President and CARICOM Chairman Bharrat Jagdeo in a statement expressing his disappointment at the failure of the talks between the two parties, believes the WICB prejudiced the effort from the start by not disclosing they had already selected a Champions Trophy squad without the top flight players.
“When the mediation under Sir Shridath Ramphal was agreed upon with me on 21 July 2009, it was in context in which WIPA made all their players available and I understand this is to be basis of a return to normalcy in team selection,” Jagdeo said.
“The members of the Board did not disclose to me or to WIPA that the Board had already selected a ‘B” team for the Champions Trophy in South Africa,” he said, adding that WICB President Julian Hunte acknowledged the board’s selection position some time after when the process was too far gone.
“The President later apologised for the omission; but the damage had been done; the mediation was weakened from the start,” Jagdeo said.
Ramnarine said that WIPA had agreed to have Sir Shridath, who was nominated by the WICB, mediate the discussions.
“It was the board that proposed Sir Shridath Ramphal to be the mediator. We could have said we don’t want Sir Shridath Ramphal … but we accepted at President Jagdeo’s office in Guyana to accept Sir Shridath and proceed on the basis that we would make our players available without any conditions whatsoever.
“We were hoping that this process would have been dealt with in a responsible manner and there will be agreement and even if there was no agreement, (there would be) agreement of a process going forward.”
Ramnarine said he had been told numerous things when Sir Shridath had been named.
“I did not know the man personally so it was difficult for me to really assess and I had to go by what people were saying. I have to admit we were a little bit sceptical at first but we said given the status and given what the guy has accomplished we needed to trust somebody,” said the former West Indies leg-spinner.
“Sir Shridath Ramphal has been exceptional by listening to both parties, the manner in which he conducted the mediation has been extremely professional. It has been a learning experience for me and I have the greatest amount of admiration for the man. He is between 70 and 80 years, and we were having meetings from nine o clock in the morning to seven or eight o clock in the night and by 9.30 we will get a document summarising the issues and a document that could take us closer.”
Ramnarine said that it was sad when both parties appeared to be close to a resolution for the WICB to introduce this new document and inform the mediator “this is not negotiable … and the document has to be accepted by both the mediator and WIPA.
“And then the third thing is that the document must be kept confidential. In other words the mediator and WIPA must never share this document with anybody,” he added.
