Vin­ode Mam­chan

Pres­i­dent of the West In­dies Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (WIPA) Wavell Hinds slammed in­to West In­dies bats­man Mar­lon Samuels for speak­ing the un­truth con­cern­ing his re­mu­ner­a­tion for play­ing for the West In­dies.

Samuels said he was be­ing paid US$5,000 per Test match and it was much low­er than what he was ac­cus­tomed to get­ting.He said that he start­ed 16 years ago and his salary back then was $5,000 and it is now very hard to go back to play­ing for $5,000.

Hinds, who played for the West In­dies, said: "I start­ed 16 years ago when Chris Gayle and I made our de­but at the Queen's Park Oval and we got US$2,500 for our first game–this is a far cry from the $5,000 that Mar­lon is speak­ing about.

"He said he was get­ting US$17,500 be­fore his salary was cut to US$5,000. Mar­lon is a re­tained play­er and gets a month­ly salary and then match fees. If he doesn't play crick­et he gets a salary each month."

The for­mer ag­gres­sive left-han­der went on to ex­plain fur­ther: "What Mar­lon is speak­ing about when he says he was get­ting US$17,500 is a salary based on the fact that the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) was giv­ing the play­ers US$35,000 per crick­et day for wear­ing their brand on the cloth­ing.

"As part of the deal with Dig­i­cel, they want­ed the WICB to re­tain play­ers so they are guar­an­teed to have staff to rep­re­sent the brand on the field. What the WICB did was to move the US$35,000 it in­to re­tain­er fee, which has been ramped up. The match fees right now are as fol­lows, Test match is US$5,750, ODIs is US$2,300 and T20s US$1,750.

Back in the year 2000, of which Mar­lon is speak­ing, the re­tain­er had three cat­e­gories and the val­ue was as fol­lows, an A+ play­er of which we had one, got US$105,000, an A grade play­er got US$80,000, a B play­ers got US$53,000 and a C play­er made US$30,000.

As of to­day the re­tain­ers have been in­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly and we have even added an ex­tra cat­e­go­ry. An A+ now gets US$150,000, an A grade is now US$135,000, B+ grade US$120,000, B grade US$115,000 and a C grade US$100,000–that is a great amount.

"What the WICB has done is to take the spon­sor­ship and put it in the re­tain­er be­cause the play­ers were be­ing paid twice for the same rea­son be­fore.

"For guys who are not re­tained–they will get match fees and a cer­tain amount for wear­ing the brand."

Hinds signed off by say­ing that WIPA has ne­go­ti­at­ed well with the WICB and the play­ers get US$30.5m of the com­mer­cial rev­enue. Out of this amount 57 per cent goes to the in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers and the oth­er 43 per cent goes to the CPL play­ers. The small­er num­ber of the play­ers are get­ting the big­ger part of the rev­enue," he end­ed.