The dead­line for the West In­dies crick­eters to in­di­cate their will­ing­ness to tour South Africa is 5 pm to­day and from all re­ports the 15 play­ers se­lect­ed will sign their con­tracts and board the plane for South Africa.

The men se­lect­ed to tour South Africa were giv­en their match/tour con­tracts last week by the WICB, who asked them to put pen to pa­per by 5 pm or con­sid­er them­selves out.

In­for­ma­tion reach­ing the T&T Guardian is that the play­ers will all be sign­ing. A source close to the sit­u­a­tion said the play­ers have agreed to al­low the process of res­o­lu­tion to take place while they com­pete against the South Africans.

West In­dies will play three Test match­es against South Africa, start­ing on De­cem­ber 17. This will be fol­lowed by three T20s and five ODIs, lead­ing up to the World Cup in New Zealand and Aus­tralia in Feb­ru­ary.

The West In­dies crick­eters left their tour of In­dia pre­ma­ture­ly af­ter talks broke down over their pay­ment struc­ture un­der the new MOU, signed be­tween the WICB and the West In­dies Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (Wipa). Un­der the new MOU, the play­ers had to part ways with the US$35,000 per day im­age rights fee.

In the new match/tour con­tract, the WICB has de­cid­ed to take a dif­fer­ent ap­proach with sec­tion 5.5 of their con­tract and will ei­ther let the mat­ter go to ne­go­ti­a­tion, ar­bi­tra­tion or some sort of dis­pute res­o­lu­tion soon.

What­ev­er the play­ers re­ceive from the process will be paid to them retroac­tive­ly. The WICB is ask­ing them to play crick­et in the mean time and hold for a de­ci­sion on the res­o­lu­tion process.