Justice Prakash Moosai has warned the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) about losing its players to big money leagues.
Delivering the feature address at Sunday’s Eastern Credit Union Premier League awards ceremony at La Joya, the former Trinidad and Tobago batsman recapped the current standoff between the WICB and the West Indies Players Association (WIPA) over contracts, noting that ’the WICB needs to be careful that in this current economic climate where so much money is available to the players for playing the shortest version of the game and for endorsements, the IPL (Indian Premier League) is a fine example, that players do not follow in the footsteps of (England all-rounder) Andrew Flintoff and become freelance limited overs cricketers’.
Moosai was referring to an article by Cricket Australia chief executive officer Paul Marsh about the dilemma facing many cricketers now in terms of ’putting cash before country.’
Moosai concurred with Marsh’s view that ’international players nowadays will generally gravitate to the clubs that offer them the best terms and conditions and where cricketers can earn far more money in the shorter version of the game, the International Cricket Council (ICC) and the various cricketing boards will have to think long and hard about what has to be done to counteract what could be the Flintoff avalanche.
’Why would Flintoff sign a £25,000 contract with the English Cricket Board and have to agree to a number of significant obligations and restrictions when he can sign a six-week IPL contract for 35 times the value of his ECB contract a month, an option that still allows him to sign various other cricket contracts throughout the world?’
He also noted that the top five highest-earning cricketers were from India, with Mahendra Singh Dhoni earning US$10 million a year and the other four earning in excess of US$5 million.
In the West Indies, the dilemma is even more pronounced with what he calls the ’never-ending industrial relations tensions’ between WIPA and WICB.
’The WICB, given the fundamental challenges faced by all cricketing boards, with the aid of Caricom and the ICC, should seek to resolve the current impasse urgently, failing which West Indies cricket will run the risk of having our premier cricketers becoming freelance limited overs cricketers.
’If players continue to be restricted from entering into endorsements with third parties as they currently are, it is very likely that players will choose not to be contracted by their home boards,’ Moosai concluded.
