PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – With no resolution yet to the current contracts dispute but with the date looming for new retainer contracts to be signed, cricket officials are hoping sponsors Digicel can extend the deadline to allow for the impasse to be sorted.

The deadline has been set for September 30 but Gerard Pinard, a member of the West Indies Cricket Board’s negotiating committee, said it was being hoped that Digicel could be convinced to give the feuding parties more time to reach an agreement.

Pinard, an industrial relations consultant, said that during the recently failed mediation talks, Sir Shridath Ramphal had indicated he would contact former Jamaican Prime Minister PJ Patterson to get his assistance in having the deadline extended.
“He (Sir Shridath) said that he would speak to Mr. PJ Patterson and ask him to approach the sponsors Digicel to have the deadline relaxed from September 30 to the end of December,” said Pinard.

“This would allow for the West Indies Cricket Board and the West Indies Players Association to convene meetings in order to come to a reasonable resolution of the issues at hand.”

The dispute, now in its third month, has virtually crippled West Indies cricket with weakened squads being selected for the recent Bangladesh series and the upcoming ICC Champions Trophy in South Africa.

CARICOM last week intervened in an attempt to solve the impasse but neither the WICB nor WIPA have yet to return to the bargaining table.

“The players had refused to sign the retainer contracts because there was a dis-agreement over the issue of the players’ rights,” Pinard said.

“We told WIPA to let the players sign the retainers on time and we would leave the ‘rights issue’ to be dealt with after but this never happened.”
Last year the WICB lost US$3 million in sponsorship money from Digicel because they did not have the required number of players signing the retainer contracts.