WI players’ attorney calls on WICB to come clean

(Trinidad Express) Ralph Thorne QC is urging the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) to “publicly make the pledge against victimisation that they made behind closed doors”.
Thorne is representing the West Indies players in the impasse with the WICB and the West Indies Players’ Association (WIPA) and was part of a meeting between the three parties at Hyatt Regency, Port of Spain last Friday which was convened by prime ministers of St Vincent and the Grenadines, Dr Ralph Gonsalves and Grenada, Dr Keith Mitchell.
The meeting was called after the West Indies players, led by ODI captain Dwayne Bravo, withdrew their services for the one-day series of the India tour after the fourth match because of a pay dispute with the WICB and the players WIPA. After a WICB Board of Directors meeting on Thursday, the WICB sent a statement with updates coming out of the meeting. One of the updates stated: “The WICB advises that following the meeting (at Hyatt), the Board sent a draft joint statement to the attorneys representing WIPA and the players and is awaiting the response of the players’ attorney. A statement will be provided once such response is received.”
Yesterday, Thorne made it clear that he had submitted suggestions towards a joint statement on the following day. “I am appalled that the WICB would publicly claim that they are awaiting a response from me when we have been enduring the WICB’s inertia and neglect to promptly issue a statement after submitting our suggestions towards their statement since Saturday, November 1, 2014,” Thorne said in his letter yesterday. “I again wrote an email to the WICB and its lawyer this morning (Friday) on the aspect of their proposed statement that I considered a ‘sine qua non’ to just resolution of this entire affair,” said Thorne, adding, “I will not approve a statement that refuses to explicitly reflect WICB’s undertaking not to victimise or discriminate in their selection policy.” “I believe that the WICB has spent this week transfixed in a dilemma between future right and wrong. In blaming me for their conundrum I can now empathise with the unfair treatment that my clients have endured under the heavy hand of the WICB. “I will continue to insist that they (the WICB) publicly make the pledge against victimisation that they made behind closed doors,” Thorne concluded.