Cricket West Indies CEO warns ICC about under-strength squads on test tours due to financial disparities

Cricket West Indies (CWI) Chief Executive Officer Johnny Grave has warned the International Cricket Council (ICC) that unless the three biggest cricket boards help the other nations financially, there will be more instances of under-strength squads going on test tours.

Grave’s comments came as a response to criticism from former Australian captains Steve Waugh and Michael Clarke in particular about the weakened test squad West Indies have taken to Australia to compete in the two test matches. The West Indies squad contains just five members from the previous tour down under with seven members of the touring party uncapped at the international level.

Grave said “the revenue share model is completely broken. If we really want to operate as a cricketing community we are only as strong as the weakest team and we’ve got to change the mindset of bilateral cricket.”

West Indies sit midtable on the revenue-distribution model for the full member 2024-2027 commercial cycle and are set to receive US$27.50 million annually. Below them are one time World Cup winner Sri Lanka ($27.12 million), Bangladesh ($26.74 million), South Africa ($26.24 million). At the top of the tree, The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) will earn US $230 million out of the ICC’s annual earnings of $600 million, with the England Cricket Board earning US$41.33 million and Cricket Australia (CA) getting US$37.53 million.

Grave believes that the years of no regulations to cap the amount of overseas players playing in franchise leagues, something which has only been greenlit by the ICC last year, has had a knock on effect.

On July 13, the ICC approved a cap of four overseas players- active or retired- and seven local players including Associate players for all new T20 leagues. However, that does not include existing tournaments such as the UAE based International League (ILT20), US’s Major League Cricket (MLC) and Canada’s Global T20 (GLT20). All leagues will have to pay a ten per cent release fee to the home board of each player it hires every season.

“If those regulations had been in place, the ILT20 probably wouldn’t have had the enormous effect it has had on bilateral international cricket in January,” Grave said. “It wouldn’t have had as many international players, therefore, wouldn’t have got the broadcast revenues and probably wouldn’t be offering players the kinds of money they are offering. CWI has spent over two million dollars sending teams to Australia in the last four months and whilst CA have received all the economic benefits from those series, we have seen zero dollars back. Is that really fair, reasonable and sustainable?”

He added “we don’t have the ability to compete with the leagues on purely salaries and even if we did, we wouldn’t have any money left for grassroots cricket and other crucial programmes in our system that need our funding. We are not going to throw money at any player in order for them to say no to the Franchise leagues or force them under contract to go and play Test cricket or ODI cricket. If you want to go play ILT20 or SA20 instead of going to Australia this year, good luck and best wishes, here’s your NOC. We genuinely hope that for any of our current T20 players that they play well in these overseas leagues and work hard because it is part of their individual preparations for the T20 World Cup.”