Cricket West Indies sees massive changes in player contracts policies

Cricket West Indies (CWI) is keen on putting up a revamped structure for the central contracts of the players of the Windies side. The new policies laid down by the board has categorized players into different grades. The players who feature in all formats of the game will be in the highest grade and would receive a maximum retainer of over US $300,000 including match fees.

The CWI has formed a four member team, headed by Courtney Browne, to shortlist players for each of the category. The listings of these categories would be made public soon. As per the reports in ESPNcricinfo, this new policy is based on the vision of CWI CEO Johnny Grave.

The reports suggest that Category A will comprise players who play predominantly Tests and ODIs. Category B will be for only Test players, while Category C will cover players featuring in only ODIs and T20s. Reportedly, the first set of players to have been named in the Grade C are Carlos Brathwaite, Jason Mohammed, Evin Lewis, Rovman Powell, Ashley Nurse and Kesrick Williams. In other news, the match fees for the ODIs would be 5000 USD and 2500 USD for the T20Is. Grave spoke at length about their plans recently.

“The first thing we did was extend the CWI-WIPA MoU by one year until the end of the 2019 World Cup cycle. While the overall aim was to create flexible contracts, when I realised the MoU was ending in 2018, but yet our television and sponsorship deals were ending in 2019, it made sense to extend it and link our major revenues with WIPA,” quoted Johnny Grave.

Reasons for allocating Grade C contracts

It is surprising to see some big names in the Grade C contract. The likes of Carlos Brathwaite, who has been a World Cup hero, has been named in the list. Speaking on this, the Cricket West Indies head Johnny Grave mentioned that he has only done the paper work. The actual decision to put players into the contracts has been made by the four member selection panel.

“I create paper work and numbers, selectors chose those to award contracts. Jimmy (Jimmy Adams, CWI director of cricket) and I weren’t involved in that. However the logic behind those is – Carlos, although he is not in ODI team, is our T20 captain, Jason [Mohammed] is the ODI vice-captain and Nurse has performed well this year in limited-overs cricket. Evin, Rovman and Kesrick are upcoming players. We want to offer incentives to want to play and be loyal to West Indies and not T20s leagues, which, for good reason, are already after their talents,” he noted.

On Gayle, Bravos, and Sammy

Interestingly, the big names of West Indies cricket seem missing from the list. Commenting on this, Grave noted that the Bravos and Darren Sammy are not playing for West Indies at the moment. Hence, they cannot get the contracts. In case of Kieron Pollard and Sunil Narine, there are no domestic performances to bolster their inclusion in the central contracts. The same is applicable for veteran superstars like Chris Gayle and Marlon Samuels.

“Sammy and Bravos don’t play for West Indies at the moment, so we can’t offer contracts to people who are not in the team. Pollard, Narine and Badree are only in the T20 team, (and) white-ball contracts are for those who play ODIs and T20s. It’s a view of the selectors that both Pollard and Narine have to show form in the Regional Super50 one-day competition to regain selection in the ODI team. If they play that tournament and perform I don’t see why they wouldn’t get recalled,” mentioned the Cricket West Indies head.

“Obviously post amnesty, Gayle and Marlon played in England, if we had won the series and they had made lots of runs, they probably would have got contracts. So I think the selectors want to see them in New Zealand, Super50 and World Cup Qualifiers, but I suspect at some stage in 2018 they will get contracts given the new system,” Grave added.