Vin­ode Mam­chan

The Board of Con­trol for Crick­et in In­dia (BC­CI) when they meet on No­vem­ber 9 for their an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing in Mum­bai, would have on the agen­da, crick­et re­la­tions with the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB).

Two weeks ago pres­i­dent of the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB), Dave Cameron and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Michael Muir­head met with the pres­i­dent of the BC­CI Shashank Manohar and gen­er­al sec­re­tary Anurag Thakur in Mum­bai af­ter they vis­it­ed Sri Lan­ka for the first two days of the open­ing Test in Galle.

Pres­i­dent Cameron at that point told Guardian Me­dia that the meet­ing cen­tered around re­sum­ing bi-lat­er­al re­la­tions be­tween the two boards, af­ter the In­di­ans had sev­ered ties fol­low­ing the abort­ed tour to In­dia last Oc­to­ber. Cameron re­port­ed that the meet­ing went very well and he is await­ing the BC­CI re­sponse.

The In­di­an crick­et team is due to tour the Caribbean for four Test match­es next year and the WICB is try­ing to woe the In­di­ans here in an ef­fort to re­sume ties and al­so to ben­e­fit from what is ex­pect­ed to be a very prof­itable tour.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the pro­pos­al be­fore the BC­CI is cen­tered around us­ing crick­et to re­pay the US$41.97m bill which the BB­CI is claim­ing in loss­es af­ter the Caribbean side abort­ed the se­ries. The West In­dies team had played four of the slat­ed five ODIs and de­cid­ed to leave the tour over a pay struc­ture dis­pute with the WICB. The In­di­ans were lead­ing the se­ries 2-1, with the match at Cut­tack washed out due to cy­clone Hud­hud.

The West In­dies were al­so due to play three Test match­es but due to the play­ers' ac­tions the board could not field a side to send for that as­pect of the se­ries and the match­es were called off.

The BC­CI got Sri Lan­ka to fill the re­main­der of the se­ries in which they play five ODIs, but loss­es still amount­ed to US$41.97m. It is un­der­stood that the WICB has asked that the match­es that were not played on that se­ries, take place at a mu­tu­al­ly de­cid­ed win­dow on the in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et cal­en­dar. "We don't have that kind of mon­ey they are ask­ing for and hence we have de­cid­ed to seek a so­lu­tion through play­ing the match­es that were not played dur­ing the tour," de­clared an of­fi­cial close to the sit­u­a­tion.

If the BC­CI agrees to al­low the match­es to take place it will hap­pen prob­a­bly dur­ing the lat­er half of next year and it would mean that they trav­el to the West In­dies pri­or to that and play the four match­es that are card­ed un­der the Fu­ture Tours Pro­gramme (FTP).The WICB now awaits word from the BC­CI and if they de­cide against re­sum­ing bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions, then the WICB will have to look for a re­place­ment to come to the Caribbean for the pe­ri­od that those match­es were card­ed for.