Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) has come good on their promise and has re­paid the Eng­land Crick­et Board (ECB) the US$3M (TT$20.2m) loan that the or­gan­i­sa­tion got in May to help set­tle play­ers' out­stand­ing salaries.

This was re­vealed by the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) of CWI John­ny Grave in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Sports yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to Grave: "We have re­ceived our US$7M from the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) as our nor­mal rev­enue share which each board mem­ber gets and the ECB has been paid off."

As part of the agree­ment, the funds were to be paid by the ICC di­rect­ly to the ECB with the bal­ance com­ing to CWI. Back in May, Grave was quot­ed in the Na­tion News as say­ing: "We agree, we got a three-mil­lion-dol­lar ad­vance of our ICC dis­tri­b­u­tion that was giv­en to us by ECB. It’s a short-term in­ter­est-free ad­vance be­cause its due to be paid back in full in Ju­ly, di­rect­ly by ICC to ECB, and will be de­duct­ed from the mon­ey we get."

The loan from the ECB came at a time that caused con­tro­ver­sy for CWI and pres­i­dent Ricky Sker­ritt. The board was ac­cused of agree­ing to tour Eng­land dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic be­cause of the loan giv­en to them by ECB. Some went fur­ther to sug­gest that the loan was giv­en to CWI in re­turn for sup­port to Col­in Graves the ECB chair­man who is vy­ing to be­come the chair­man of the ICC.

When news broke that it was the ICC who guar­an­teed the loan those ru­mours were dis­pelled. Ac­cord­ing to Grave a while back: "In ear­ly May when we re­ceived it, we weren’t dis­cussing it at all be­cause the sit­u­a­tion in the UK was not the state that it is now. So, I guar­an­tee you it’s not linked in any way shape, or form to our tour­ing or not tour­ing.”

CWI went to Eng­land be­cause af­ter they knocked at the ICC door for the ear­ly dis­bur­sal of the next in­stal­ment of mem­bers' rev­enue shares, it was not pos­si­ble. The ad­min­is­tra­tive process at ICC’S end was tak­ing the time and that is when ECB chipped in and agreed to pro­vide an in­ter­est-free loan to CWI.

Sker­ritt has al­so de­nied that the loan en­sured CWI’s back­ing for Col­in Graves. He men­tioned that the loan was a help­ing hand giv­en to CWI be­cause of their fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion that was made from bad to worst be­cause of the COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion.

He said it seemed to him that the is­sue was be­ing blown up for po­lit­i­cal pur­pos­es on­ly, most­ly by mis­chie­vous per­sons who have lit­tle gen­uine care for the well­be­ing of crick­et.

Sker­ritt, who be­came West In­dies pres­i­dent in 2019 re­plac­ing Dave Cameron said the on­ly pre-con­di­tion set for the tour was for the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of his play­ers and once that was as­sured, the tour went ahead as it was part of the ICC FTP agree­ment and the World Test Cham­pi­onship.