West Indies board ready to take on players

The dispute between the West Indies board (WICB) and the players took another twist yesterday when Bruce Aanensen, the WICB's chief executive, said that it was prepared to replace any players who refused to sign the tour contracts.

On April 22, the WICB and WIPA, the players association, failed to agree on the status of the forthcoming tour to England and referred the matter to arbitration.

WIPA believes that the board constantly refused to discuss the matter until the last minute in a deliberate attempt to force players to sign contracts pending the ruling of the arbitrator. This would seem to be supported by evidence that Ken Gordon, the WICB's president, refused to agree to meetings, or even to discuss the matter, for six weeks after board officials had repeatedly indicated that they agreed with WIPA's assessment of the situation.

Every tour since a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the two parties last year has gone to arbitration, and in every instance, the players have won.

"We are going ahead with the tour and we are preparing contracts for the players to sign," Aanensen said. "All the documents have been submitted to [the arbitrator]. He says he needs time to study them and that he doesn't believe there is any way that they can have this arbitration prior to the team leaving on the eighth.

"We are going to announce the team on Wednesday and we are in the process of preparing the contracts for the players to sign and we will see where we go from there, but we believe we are fully within our rights. We have players also on retainer contracts and as part of those retainer contracts our legal people have confirmed to us that the people who have those retainer contracts cannot refuse to go on tour."

"If there are any players selected for the tour who do not have retainer contracts, if they refuse to sign the contract, it just means they don't want to go on the tour, so then we move to the next set of players until we get a team of 15, that's our position."

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