West In­dies Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tions (WIPA) Pres­i­dent Wavell Hinds and Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) Di­rec­tors were ei­ther silent or gave mixed mes­sages in re­sponse to board pres­i­dent Dave Cameron's threat to T&T trio Kieron Pol­lard, Dar­ren Bra­vo and Sunil Nar­ine, that they may not play for Windies again.

Speak­ing to Ja­maican Net­work TVJ Sports on Jan­u­ary 25, Cameron made these con­tro­ver­sial re­marks af­ter the three play­ers chose to play in Pak­istan Su­per League over World Cup Qual­i­fiers: "We asked them to do the math and bal­ance, give us an op­por­tu­ni­ty and play for us this time.

"We were very dis­ap­point­ed about it (play­ers' de­ci­sion) and the board in its wis­dom, feels that af­ter this World Cup - the qual­i­fiers - we'll prob­a­bly not in­vite those play­ers to be a part of Crick­et West In­dies go­ing for­ward."

How­ev­er, he took a dif­fer­ent view to­wards his coun­try­man An­dre Rus­sell. "I think he (Rus­sell) has pre­sent­ed a rea­son­ably good case for the amount of 50 overs crick­et at this point in time.

"While he will play the Su­per50, he will not play the qual­i­fiers but we be­lieve he should be avail­able for Crick­et West In­dies go­ing for­ward."

T&T Crick­et Board Pres­i­dent Az­im Bas­sarath de­fend­ed the play­ers and knocked back Cameron's state­ment in a Jan­u­ary 28th news ar­ti­cle.

"Mr. Cameron in his per­son­al ca­pac­i­ty and as pres­i­dent can­not speak on be­half of the board. That mater was nev­er brought be­fore the en­tire board. For him to give the im­pres­sion that he is speak­ing on be­half of the board, I can't agree with his state­ment."

Bas­sarath added, "How the board is con­struct­ed he does not have a say in who rep­re­sents West In­dies. That is for the se­lec­tors to de­cide. It is not for Dave Cameron to de­cide who plays for West In­dies.

"It's not cor­rect for Cameron to come out and speak about play­ers like that. That is not en­cour­age­ment or mo­ti­va­tion for top play­ers to come back and play for West In­dies."

<Hinds: Se­lec­tion MUST be

in­de­pen­dent, trans­par­ent>

Con­tact­ed by Cricbuzz, WIPA pres­i­dent Wavell Hinds while not stat­ing when asked whether he agreed or dis­agreed with Cameron's state­ment, said: "WIPA will con­tin­ue to en­sure that the process for se­lec­tion to ALL West In­dies (Windies) Men's and Women's Team are root­ed and guid­ed by CWI's se­lec­tion pol­i­cy as so ap­proved by its board of di­rec­tors.

"The ex­e­cu­tion of the se­lec­tion pol­i­cy MUST re­side with an in­de­pen­dent, trans­par­ent, fair and fear­less pan­el, du­ly ap­point­ed by CWI board of di­rec­tors."

Ja­maica di­rec­tor Dono­van Ben­nett stat­ed his agree­ment with Cameron. "I have to agree (with Cameron), I don't think he made a de­fin­i­tive state­ment. He said the pos­si­bil­i­ty ex­ists that they may not play, but I would want to sup­port Cameron on that view," said Ben­nett.

"Yes, he (Az­im Bas­sarath) is right al­so, any de­ci­sion like that would have to go to board for rat­i­fi­ca­tion - but I don't think that pre­cludes the pres­i­dent from stat­ing his per­son­al opin­ion.

"There is no way we can con­tin­ue like this, some of these guys (have) been un­avail­able for maybe two years mak­ing all sorts of ex­cus­es, but at the same time us­ing lo­cal com­pe­ti­tion to sharp­er skills, fa­cil­i­ties to keep them­selves fit at great cost to us," Ben­nett added.

"But when times comes around for them to rep­re­sent the re­gion, they are not avail­able. And I'm par­tic­u­lar­ly up­set at present sit­u­a­tion be­cause Windies crick­et is at a cross­roads, fight­ing for sur­vival.

"We are try­ing to qual­i­fy for a glob­al event, for the first time - so in a sce­nario like that for play­ers to make them­selves un­avail­able for what­ev­er rea­son, I have a prob­lem with that."

<Ri­ley wants to re­vis­it amnesty>

Bar­ba­dos Di­rec­tor Conde Ri­ley was elu­sive al­so but not­ed he would like to see the amnesty re­vis­it­ed.

"The idea was we (board) rec­og­nize play­ers are try­ing to se­cure their fu­ture, so we (board) would meet you half way and ask you (play­ers) if you are avail­able to play for the West In­dies," said Ri­ley.

"So, I, as a di­rec­tor, am dis­ap­point­ed that we won't have them, but at the same time, I un­der­stand that they are try­ing to se­cure their fu­tures and I have no prob­lem with that.

"What we have to do though, as a board, is re­vis­it the amnesty and have an­oth­er sit down with play­ers. It hasn't worked as well as we would have hoped, but I hope go­ing for­ward we can get the guys on board," Ri­ley rea­soned.

"I want play­ers to be forth­right and com­fort­able, if they want to play in T20 leagues, say so but al­so give back a bit. This thing about the board be­ing an­ti-play­er I'm past that.

"Car­los Brath­waite re­cent­ly went to Big Bash (and) was back for Bar­ba­dos in the on­go­ing Su­per50 and will be off to Zim­bab­we. That's the sort of com­mit­ment I would like to see from all play­ers across the re­gion and not have a fight over it.

"We rec­og­nize that we have giv­en a win­dow for all play­ers to go to IPL be­cause that's the most lu­cra­tive league. But at times we will ask them to rep­re­sent West In­dies since they came through all our youth de­vel­op­ment se­tups.

"This is not about giv­ing back to the board, but the young play­ers who will gain a lot from their ex­pe­ri­ence."

<CWI di­rec­tor refuse to com­ment>

Cricbuzz al­so con­tact­ed the di­rec­tor's quar­tet of Guyana - Anand Sanasie and Anand Kalladeen - along with Wind­wards Is­lands duo Ju­lian Charles from St Lu­cia and Kishore Shal­low from St.Vin­cent and the Grenadines. All de­clined to com­ment.

Bil­ly Heav­en (Ja­maica), Enoch Lewis and Den­rick Liburb (both Lee­wards Is­lands) could not be reached.

Ob­serv­ing the sit­u­a­tion FI­CA ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Tony Irish not­ed how this lat­est Windies play­ers and board stand­off could have great im­pli­ca­tions in world crick­et.

"With­out com­ment­ing on the specifics of the West In­dies sit­u­a­tion the prob­lem is a fore­run­ner of what is to come more wide­ly in world crick­et if the cur­rent crick­et struc­ture con­tin­ues," said Irish.

"This is a free agency is­sue and as we all know West In­dies is the first crick­et na­tion to be hit by the re­al chal­lenges of play­er-free agency. Sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions will arise for oth­er coun­tries in time un­less a prop­er bal­ance is found be­tween the tra­di­tion­al play­er mar­ket and the new play­er mar­ket.

"FI­CA flagged these types of is­sues a long time ago. The an­swer doesn't lie in at­tempt­ing to re­strict or to pun­ish play­ers, and CWI won't solve these types of is­sues on its own. Prop­er bal­ance in the struc­ture re­quires glob­al will and glob­al ac­tion."

(SOURCE - Cricbuzz)