Tri-series will be bi-series without Lara's Windies
By Alex Brown
December 23, 2004
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India are unavailable and the Australia A experiment is unappealing. So, with those options effectively ruled out, the fate of this season's limited-overs tri-series will be determined at a mediation meeting between the West Indies Cricket Board and the players' association in Grenada on Thursday.
As the West Indian contract dispute rumbled on, Cricket Australia officials conceded they could only hope that the feuding parties in the Caribbean resolved their differences before the team's scheduled departure for Australia on December 29.
Certainly, the prospect of a minimum fine of $US2 million ($2.6m) should dissuade the cash-strapped board from abandoning from the tour.
But should mediation fail to resolve the dispute - centred on the players' entitlement to sign personal endorsement deals with companies in competition with team sponsors - the board could potentially avoid a fine by sending an under-strength team to compete against Australia and Pakistan from next month.
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AdvertisementOriginally, CA chief executive James Sutherland floated the possibility of replacing the West Indies if the WICB fielded an inferior team. But that option has been eliminated because India, the only team without international commitments in January, have ruled themselves out.
The chief executive of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, SK Nair, said there was "absolutely no chance" his side would be in Australia in 2005.
"We have played a lot of cricket and we are receiving Pakistan in February," he said. "Playing that series in Australia isn't an option."
Similarly, the prospect of fielding an Australia A team against Australia and Pakistan appears remote. Australian vice-captain Adam Gilchrist said the lessons from 1994-95 - when Australia A competed against Australia, England and Zimbabwe in a quadrangular one-day tournament - should be heeded.
"Nothing has been said to us about the possibility of playing Australia A this season, and from what I've been led to believe about the last time it happened, it was a pretty awkward situation," Gilchrist said.
"I remember the Australian players that year saying how odd it was to be playing in front of a home crowd where your team wasn't being supported, because everyone wanted to see Australia A win."
Meanwhile, CA is waiting and hoping that the WICB delivers on its promise - issued in an official communique yesterday - that the contract dispute was unlikely to affect either the Windies' participation in the tri-series or the strength of their squad.
That statement came a day after the troubling claims of WICB board member Chetram Singh, who reportedly said a decision to ignore players' demands for $US500,000 in appearance money for the VB Series "puts the tour in jeopardy".
Separate reports from the Caribbean suggest the WICB's new major sponsor is pushing for Brian Lara - supposedly heading the band of disgruntled players - to be axed as captain.
When contacted yesterday, Lara would not comment on those reports. His brother and manager, Richard Lara, was also guarded when asked if Brian's captaincy was under threat.
Although the captaincy issue remains unresolved, officials from the WICB have contacted Sutherland this week, expressing their confidence that the tour would proceed.
"At the moment, our plan is that everything is going ahead, and going ahead on schedule," said CA communications manager Peter Young. "There are no fallback plans that are being discussed and none are in place."
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