Indian players and the BCCI have failed to find consensus on performance-based contracts and have so deferred the issue till the World Cup gets over.
MUMBAI: Will the players’ contract see the light of the day? Not before the World Cup, for sure. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has, once again, put the issue in cold storage after tom-toming that it wanted to resolve the matter before Rahul Dravid & Co left for the mega-event in the West Indies.
After a meeting with Indian captain here on Tuesday, the Board issued a brief statement: “It is mutually agreed that the players’ contract would be implemented after the return of the team from the ICC Cricket World Cup 2007. At the meeting today, the draft agreement was discussed in detail and the views of the players were exchanged.”
What, of course, was not said in the release was the difference of views between the Board and the players over some of the features of the revised contracts which, as is being widely reported, is based on performance-based incentives. The contracts are due since October last year.
Board officials were not willing to comment on the perceived differences but secretary Niranjan Shah, who was present at the meeting along with CAO Ratnakar Shetty and former president IS Bindra, conceded that the two parties needed some more time to understand each other’s position. “The World Cup is just the round the corner. We as well as the players don’t want to be bogged down by any other issue,” Shah said. The Board’s stand is a climbdown from an earlier position that it would consult the players and not necessarily accept their views.
Dravid was the only representative from the players’ side. Sachin Tendulkar did not go. Virender Sehwag, who had spoken out against the contracts, was not called.
By agreeing to talk later, the two parties have averted a potentially dangerous crisis. There was no enactiment of a West Indies-like situation where the players are perennially at war with their board over financial issues. And it has not missed the Board’s notice. “Our boys are a good bunch. We’ll not deny whatever is due to them,” Shah conceded. The Board secretary was not willing to discuss the features of the draft but it is believed to be broadly based on a system where the player earns a bonus for every win, the team for every series triumph.
The lowest figure is believed to be Rs 5 lakh which a player could get for an ODI win and the maximum could be about Rs 1.5 crore which the team could be awarded for an overseas Test series win.
But Shah refused to confirm or deny the figures. “We’re not yet discussing any figures. The figures could be more or less,” he said. It may depend on who calls the shots after the World Cup — the Board or players.
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