DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, CMC- Salvaging West Indies’ next scheduled tour – to South Africa – would be the first priority at next week’s board meeting of the Internal Cricket Council (ICC), top cricket official Wally Edwards has said.
Edwards, the chair of the ICC’s executive committee, says he believes a new spirit of good faith exist at the ICC to resolve the current West Indies debacle. West Indies cricketers aborted their tour of India over a pay dispute with the West Indies Players Association (WIPA) leaving the Board of Cricket for Control in India (BCCI) furious.
“I think there’s a genuine desire at the ICC next week to get things back on track,” Edwards said.
“In the past you’d talk about these things but you could never resolve anything in previous administrations at the ICC because there were factions all round the table and it was very difficult to have good quality debates then make a decision. But we have now got a fully functioning board and it’s well led”.
West Indies cricket has been placed on a financial precipice after a BCCI announcement that it intends to commence legal action against West Indies and that it was suspending bilateral arrangements.
But Edwards says he does not foresee West Indies being bankrupted by the withdrawal of Indian support via the television revenue to be gained from India tours of the Caribbean. “I don’t believe they will be lost, I can’t imagine that,” Edwards said.
“They’ve had disputes before, they’ve had ongoing rumblings there for quite a while, and I feel confident they will get resolved”.
