The West In­dies Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (Wipa) con­tin­ued their bat­tle with the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) yes­ter­day, con­demn­ing the ac­tions of the board in not of­fer­ing Ramnaresh Sar­wan a re­tain­er con­tract. Wipa in a press re­lease stat­ed that Sar­wan was in­formed by the board that they were con­cerned about his fit­ness and at­ti­tude.

The re­lease stat­ed: "CEO of the WICB Dr Ernest Hi­laire had, by let­ter of Jan­u­ary 2010,�in­formed Mr Sar­wan that, fol­low­ing a re­view of the West In­dies team re­port of the Oc­to­ber/No­vem­ber 2009 tour to Aus­tralia, it was draw­ing to his at­ten­tion the Board's con­cern about his at­ti­tude and ap­proach to fit­ness and phys­i­cal prepa­ra­tion.�

"The re­port of this re­view has nev­er been seen by ei­ther WIPA or Mr Sar­wan. By let­ter of Jan­u­ary 11, 2010 the WICB ac­knowl­edged that it was not high­light­ing any spe­cif­ic in­ci­dents re­gard­ing these con­cerns but that its let­ter was mere­ly to sen­si­tise Mr Sar­wan to its de­sire for a high­er lev­el of com­mit­ment and ap­pli­ca­tion from him as a con­tract­ed play­er with the West In­dies crick­et team. The Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer's let­ter to Mr Sar­wan was copied to the pres­i­dent and CEO of Wipa, Mr Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine."

The re­lease fur­ther stat­ed: "By let­ter of Jan­u­ary 21, WIPA re­quest­ed that the WICB spec­i­fy the in­stances where Mr Sar­wan has demon­strat­ed such ap­par­ent­ly neg­a­tive be­hav­iour­al traits and al­so no­ti­fied the WICB that since the sup­posed find­ings of a re­view team was nev­er dis­cussed with Mr Sar­wan that he should have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be heard on the mat­ter. "Wipa al­so made it clear that it would be in­equitable to take such a re­port in­to con­sid­er­a­tion with re­gard to any fu­ture se­lec­tion process­es per­ti­nent to Mr Sar­wan in these cir­cum­stances. The WICB has not re­spond­ed on this mat­ter."

WIPA thinks that the board's de­ci­sion not to give Sar­wan a re­tain­er and the com­ments they made will have se­ri­ous con­se­quences to the play­er's im­age. Sar­wan's sit­u­a­tion as de­tailed above is not sin­gu­lar and Wipa is in the process of ex­am­in­ing the cas­es of oth­er ex­clud­ed play­ers which it be­lieves need to be re­con­sid­ered. �