Both the West In­dies Crick­et Board and the West In­dies Play­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion ap­pear to be back­ing down yes­ter­day from po­si­tions on which they agreed dur­ing the me­di­a­tion process un­der for­mer Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Shri­dath Ram­phal.

The WICB has de­cid­ed to pur­sue dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion against the play­ers that breached its Code of Con­duct, and the play­ers' body has ruled out a role for the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice in up­com­ing ar­bi­tra­tion pro­ceed­ings. The re­gion­al gov­ern­ing body in­di­cat­ed that dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion against of­fend­ing play­ers had been ini­ti­at­ed pri­or to the com­mence­ment of me­di­a­tion. "(It) had been sus­pend­ed in favour of a set­tle­ment through me­di­a­tion," said the WICB in a

news re­lease. "The WICB had as part of its com­pro­mise in the me­di­a­tion ef­fort of­fered to with­draw all dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion against the play­ers."

The WICB news re­lease added: "With the fail­ure of me­di­a­tion, the next step would have been the set­tle­ment of all mat­ters through ar­bi­tra­tion which the WICB will be pur­su­ing im­me­di­ate­ly. "The WICB has de­cid­ed to re­sume dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion against all West In­dies play­ers who had com­mit­ted breach­es of the WICB Code of Con­duct dur­ing the Eng­land's, In­dia's, and Bangladesh's tours of the Caribbean by re­fer­ring these mat­ters to the WICB Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee." The WICB did not itemise all of the breach­es of its Code of Con­duct, but the play­ers are like­ly go­ing to be asked to re­spond to well-pub­li­cised charges from the three se­ries.

Against Eng­land, the play­ers blocked the lo­go of the team's spon­sor dur­ing the first One-Day In­ter­na­tion­al in Guyana, where they al­so failed to at­tend a cock­tail re­cep­tion host­ed by the same spon­sors.

The play­ers al­so failed to show for the of­fi­cial launch of next year's Twen­ty20 World Cup to be staged in the Caribbean dur­ing In­dia's vis­it. Things then came to a head, when 14 lead­ing play­ers with­drew from Bangladesh's tour of the Caribbean to dis­pute out­stand­ing pay and con­trac­tu­al is­sues. WIPA al­so agreed that with the me­di­a­tion hav­ing bro­ken down, a num­ber of pro­pos­als are no longer ap­plic­a­ble.

"With re­gards to the res­o­lu­tion of the out­stand­ing is­sues be­tween the par­ties, the in­volve­ment of the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice was not and is not un­der con­sid­er­a­tion as far as WIPA is con­cerned," said the play­ers' body in a sep­a­rate news re­lease. The re­lease ex­plained that dur­ing the me­di­a­tion process, Sir Shri­dath was suc­cess­ful in ob­tain­ing the ser­vices of judges from the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice and an­oth­er from the Court of Ap­peal in Be­lize to sit in their per­son­al ca­pac­i­ty as an ar­bi­tra­tion pan­el to hear two re­fer­rals. At the same time, Pres­i­dent and Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of WIPA Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine al­so de­fend­ed his po­si­tion as far as be­ing ab­sent from the me­di­a­tion process for two days.

He said that the WICB and WIPA had an agree­ment, sub­ject to the ac­qui­es­cence of a third par­ty to a par­tic­u­lar course of ac­tion which seemed very like­ly. WIPA not­ed that it was–in this con­text–that?he and WIPA at­tor­ney Dr. Kusha Har­racks­ingh left the meet­ing. "Pri­or to leav­ing, he made arrange­ments to have any out­stand­ing de­tails in the pro­posed agree­ment fi­nalised and signed by Don­na Sym­monds, an­oth­er one of WIPA's lawyers, who was present at most ses­sions of the me­di­a­tion," said the news re­lease.

WIPA al­so dis­closed that Ram­nar­ine had tak­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty of sev­er­al play­ers be­ing in Guyana to play in a friend­ly match at the in­vi­ta­tion of Guyana Pres­i­dent Bhar­rat Jagdeo to meet with his col­leagues, and up­date them on the state of play be­tween the two sides.

CMC

www.cananews.net