October 02 Wednesday 2002
ICC to review disputed player contract terms

COLOMBO: Cricket's world governing body has decided to review the disputed contract that almost led to a players' boycott of the Champions Trophy. A five-member committee of the International Cricket Council (ICC) will resolve issues such as ambush marketing and player images terms to prevent the possibility of a repeat at next year's World Cup in South Africa. 

ICC president Malcolm Gray, its CEO Malcolm Speed, Ehsan Mani, the ICC's president-elect from Pakistan, Bob Merriman, chairman of the Australian Cricket Board, and Jagmohan Dalmiya, the Indian board president, will complete their work by mid-November. 

"We will work over the next month and try to resolve those issues to the agreement of all interested parties," Speed told reporters after a meeting of the ICC's executive board. A major row centred over the conflicting rights of the official sponsors and the players' personal sponsors had threatened to ruin last month's 12-team event in Sri Lanka. 
Players from several Test countries refused to sign the participation contract disputing its player terms before most of them, barring the Indian players, agreed to sign up. 

The row almost led to a boycott by leading India players like Sachin Tendulkar and skipper Saurav Ganguly before the ICC relaxed some of the conditions at the last minute to resolve the issue. "We want to resolve all outstanding issues well ahead of the World Cup," Speed said. The player terms, which will apply for all ICC events until 2007, were drawn up following a deal with the ruling body's marketing partner Global Cricket Corporation (GCC) worth $550 million. 

Speed said the ICC's immediate concern was to settle all differences for the February-March tournament. "Right now we are looking only at the World Cup. If a sensible solution can be found, we can abide by that until 2007," he said. 
The ICC meeting also decided to give the players more representation in the governing body, although it could not draft them into its management committee because of opposition from some members. 

However, Gray said the Cricket Committee, headed by former India captain Sunil Gavaskar, would be restructured to include 10 former international players. Five of them would be chosen by test captains and the others by the boards of the 10 test countries. 

Countries will be paired, England-West Indies, Pakistan-Bangladesh, India-Sri Lanka, South Africa-Zimbabwe and Australia-New Zealand -- with each pairing sending one player representative and the other the board's choice. 

Gray said five of its members were against drafting a player representative into the management committee, although he did not identify them. India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are said to be among those who are not keen to recognise the Federation of International Cricketers Association (FICA), which represents players from many Test countries. 

"I believe it is easy to deal with one body, like in some of the other sports," Gray said. "But there are some countries which have a different cultural background, employer-employee relationship than others. "But this doesn't mean we can't talk to FICA."