West Indies Cricket Board's flip-flop has made it a joker series

From the ridiculous to the ludicrous. There’s no other way of describing the West Indies Cricket Board's flip-flop on Friday that would make a viciously turning wicket at Feroze Shah Kotla on the fourth day of a Test match seem utterly straight.
It started early in the day when the West Indian players circled around their captain Dwayne Bravo during the toss in Dharamsala. That was an indication, a strong one. And, while Virat Kohli was making the West Indians chase the leather during his 127, things became clearer. West Indies, we were told, had abandoned the Indian tour midway with three Tests, one ODI and one Twenty-20 still to go.

The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) and the West Indies Players Association (WIPA) weren't able to reach an agreement and the players decided to pull out of the series midway. The BCCI was understandably livid.

"The West Indies Cricket Board has informed the BCCI of its decision to cancel the rest of its ongoing tour to India because of a dispute with its players, and has advised the BCCI that its players will return home immediately." This wasn't some speculative demon making a dead boring series get some life - of the wrong sort - from the side. This statement was made by BCCI vicepresident Sanjay Patel.

"The BCCI will be going to ICC and planning to sue the WICB and claim for damages. We will not take this lying down as we have cooperated with them in every aspect," he had added. By late evening, even as the West Indies was chasing the Indian total on the field, the WICB passed on information to its Indian counterpart for dissemination to the media and beyond. The statement sounded as if everything that was stated earlier about the West Indies going home over dodgy pay was a figment of Sanjay Patel’s diabolical invention.

"The West Indies Cricket Board advises, that, contrary to media reports, it has taken no decision to discontinue the ongoing tour to India," the statement read. "The WICB will make a further statement following the conclusion of the fourth one-day international which is in progress."

That bad blood was brewing between the players and the West Indies board was obvious from the beginning of the ODI series, starting from Kochi when skipper Bravo had threatened action if the WIPA president Wavell Hinds and others in the association who had a conflict of interest did not resign. The players were upset with the bargaining agreement/memorandum of understanding that Hinds had signed in September with the WICB.

They insisted that the new contracts would bring down their income and match fees by 75%. Furthermore, their income generated from participating in ICC tournaments would also fall by 'upto 100 per cent'. Hinds, on the other hand, dismissed the claims saying that the new agreement would reflect a 15% across the board increase in match fees and retainer contracts that range from 12.5 per cent to 25 per cent. Hinds also refuted Bravo's claim that the players' association was receiving 3 per cent of all players' earnings and also a sum of $500,000 annually from WICB. So something must have been worked out in the interregnum.

Whether the BCCI intervened – monetarily - in the matter is still unclear. As is the business of telling the Sri Lankan Cricket Board to not come to fill in the shoes of the-then departing West Indians. That is, the BCCI had indeed, as earlier announced, asked the Sri Lankans to play out the rest of the series. Even as the farce packaged as a mystery continues, this has been a series whose high point of interest has been its low point. If that sounds confusing, you should hear the West Indies Cricket Board.