(Trinidad Express) Guyanese batsman Narsingh Deonarine has become the third West Indies cricketer to have his arbitration matter with the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) decided in his favour.
The judgement was handed down by arbitrator Seenath Jairam S.C. on August 2 in Trinidad. This disclosure was made available to the press by the West Indies Players Association’s interim chief executive officer, Michael Hall at WIPA’s office in Port of Spain yesterday.
Deonarine was awarded just under TT$500,000. The matter was jointly referred by letter to Mr Jairam by both parties.
This dispute arose when Deonarine was handed a letter from the WICB’s chief executive officer, Dr Ernest Hilaire dated January 11 2010. The letter stated that following a review of the reports from a tour of Australia, “The WICB had concerns about your attitude to fitness and physical preparation”. However, the letter did not highlight any specific incidents, and, according to Hall, there was a reason for not doing so.
Hall pointed out that at no time during the 30 months between the WICB’s January 2010 letter and the arbitrator’s ruling on August 2 this year, did the WICB offer these reports as evidence at the hearing or produce them for the benefit of Deonarine to see precisely what had been said about him then.
Hall said, “We are left to only speculate about their existence.”
The breaches of the agreements as found by the arbitrator were: The breaching of the principles of natural justice; the integrity of the selection process by not being fair and transparent; publicly denigrating a player; and failing to carry out performance appraisals.
Hall said there were disturbing similarities between this case and those of Lendl Simmons and Ramnaresh Sarwan who also were awarded sums by the arbitrator. Hall claimed those rulings showed that in all three cases, the WICB by its wilful actions were ruled to have breached the four aforementioned points.
Hall added: “WIPA cringes at the thought of what might have been done to the players if no agreements were in place.”
