GEORGE­TOWN–Guyana's act­ing Chief Jus­tice Ian Chang is set to make a rul­ing lat­er this month on the in­junc­tion brought by the Guyana Crick­et Board against the West In­dies Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion and its chief ex­ec­u­tive Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine. This fol­lows a pre­lim­i­nary ob­jec­tion put for­ward on Thurs­day by at­tor­ney Anil Nan­dalall, who is rep­re­sent­ing WIPA, Ram­nar­ine and play­er man­age­ment com­pa­ny, WIP­MA­COL. Chief Jus­tice Chang heard sub­mis­sions in Guyana's High Court when the two par­ties re­turned there Thurs­day, and is now set to make a rul­ing on Sep­tem­ber 13. Last month, the GCB had se­cured an in­ter­im in­junc­tion to re­strain WIPA, Ram­nar­ine and WIP­MA­COL act­ing on the be­half of the Cham­pi­ons League Twen­ty20-bound Guyana squad. Nan­dalall ar­gued on Thurs­day that WIPA pos­sessed the le­gal rights to con­duct busi­ness on WIP­MA­COL's be­half and said the in­junc­tion ought to lift­ed, as it was caus­ing the two or­gan­i­sa­tions fi­nan­cial hard­ships and ir­re­place­able dam­age. He added that said that un­der the law of in­junc­tions, the de­fen­dant should be ful­ly com­pen­sat­ed for what they lost and what they had to spend to dur­ing the case, if at a sub­se­quent time it is proved that they were not in the wrong.

"Be­cause an in­junc­tion mat­ter is ex-parte...which means on­ly one side is heard...the law pro­vides for com­pen­sa­tion if at a lat­er stage the court is con­vinced that the in­junc­tion should not have been grant­ed in the first place," Nan­dalall ar­gued. He said that be­cause of the le­gal tech­ni­cal­i­ty of not demon­strat­ing in their af­fi­davit their abil­i­ty to pay and not giv­ing the un­der­tak­ing to do so if they lost, the in­junc­tion should be lift­ed. "We in­tend to file a se­cu­ri­ty for cost ap­pli­ca­tion... which means we want them (GCB) to lodge mon­ey with the court be­fore we be­gin deal­ing with the sub­stan­tive mat­ter," Nan­dalall said. He al­so stressed that a high cost would be in­curred to fight this case be­cause the de­fen­dants were from over­seas and would have to trav­el to at­tend Court. WIP­MA­COL is reg­is­tered in St Lu­cia while WIPA's head­quar­ters are lo­cat­ed in Trinidad where Ram­nar­ine al­so re­sides.

San­jeev Datadin, one of the lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the GCB, claimed that since Ram­nar­ine said he does not take any mon­ey from the play­ers he would not lose fi­nan­cial­ly if the in­junc­tion re­mained in place. Datadin ex­plained that the GCB's CLT20 con­tract was signed with the In­di­an Crick­et Board and the mem­bers of the Guyana team and had noth­ing to do with WIPA. "Ram­nar­ine is talk­ing to the play­ers about play­ing or not and on mon­ey is­sues and he has no right to do that since the GCB has no con­tract with WIPA," Datadin con­tin­ued. "If the play­ers who signed with him want to play there is noth­ing that WIPA can do be­cause the GCB has no oblig­a­tion to deal with WIPA even if some of the play­ers are WIPA mem­bers." The GCB, who was rep­re­sent­ed by sec­re­tary, Anand Sanasie, has been giv­en sev­en days to re­ply to the de­fen­dants. Ram­nar­ine flew in from Trinidad for the hear­ing. CMC