The West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) yes­ter­day sent out a press re­lease de­fend­ing the de­ci­sion not to ho­n­our the re­gion­al play­ers who won the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil T20 World ti­tle in Sri Lan­ka last year.

The T&T Guardian in an ex­clu­sive sto­ry, yes­ter­day, re­port­ed that the play­ers were not giv­en any­thing af­ter win­ning the pres­ti­gious ti­tle, while the women crick­eters were be­stowed with prizes for their sec­ond place fin­ish at the ICC 50-overs World Cup in In­dia ear­li­er this year.

The re­lease quot­ed parts of a speech giv­en by the WICB pres­i­dent Dr Ju­lian Hunte at a func­tion to ho­n­our the West In­dies Women's Team in Bar­ba­dos fol­low­ing their re­turn from Sri Lan­ka.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, Hunte has asked that spe­cial at­ten­tion be paid to the fol­low­ing re­marks which were made in clos­ing: "In clos­ing, I wish to as­sure the West In­dies Men'sTeam that this "wel­come home" re­cep­tion is now in­sti­tu­tion­alised and as such ap­plies to them equal­ly. "Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it was not pos­si­ble to do this af­ter win­ning the World Twen­ty-Twen­ty Cham­pi­onship as the play­ers went off in dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions around the world from Sri Lan­ka; how­ev­er, I was pleased to have been in Sri Lan­ka as I was able to host a cel­e­bra­to­ry func­tion for the team on the night of the win."