In an extraordinary turn of events, the West Indies cricket team's tour of India was thrown into jeopardy after the aggrieved visiting side threatened to go on strike over an acrimonious pay dispute with its parent body.
Barely a day before the series gets underway here with the first ODI, the cricket team led by Dwayne Bravo shot off a letter to the West Indies Cricket Board and the Players Association, threatening to go on strike if the matter was not resolved.
The team had yesterday skipped the practice session, the pre-match press conference and the trophy unveiling ceremony as it held negotiations to diffuse the crisis after being handed contracts which would see their pay go down by approximately 75 per cent. The new contracts were given to the players after they reached India.
The players are also disgruntled with the West Indies Players Association president and chief executive Wavell Hinds for agreeing to the terms without consulting them.
Both the BCCI and the Kerala Cricket Association, however, insisted that today's match would go ahead as per schedule.
"The BCCI is not bothered about their internal issues. But as far as we are concerned the match is on," Board Secretary Sanjay Patel said.
KCA secretary T C Mathew said, "The match will take place at scheduled time. All the rumours of alleged boycott that are floating around are wrong."
According to reports, the players claimed Hinds "hoodwinked" them and did not take their inputs while signing a new MoU with West Indies Cricket Board last month, under which they would suffer a significant cut in their pay.
In a strongly-worded letter to WIPA and WICB, Bravo wrote: "We wish to make it very clear that should the players be forced to take matters into their our own hands, we will not hesitate to take the appropriate action as we see fit. We will hold you and the WIPA Board, who support this process, liable."
"The players are of the view that as a matter of principle, we should not accept these conditions whereby we are being asked to play a series against India without any certainty of what are our obligations and what we will be playing for.
