PORT-of-Spain, Trinidad – West Indies Players Association (WIPA) president and CEO Wavell Hinds said the new franchise system will allow Caribbean cricketers to market themselves to other international leagues better.

Hinds added the system will also improve them and help to lift the WI players to a more international level instead of them having to learn their trade on the job. Hinds, who replaced Dinanath Ramnarine at the helm of WIPA, signed a new Memorandum of Understanding and Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) with the WICB Thursday in Barbados.
Speaking to SportsMax last Saturday, Hinds said: “It is an opportunity for the cricketers to become better. It is an opportunity for them to become marketable and it gives the franchise the opportunity to produce world class teams within the Caribbean so that we can have a top class, first class competition and ultimately produce world class players on the training ground all the way up to the level of the West Indies.”
Hinds said the move to franchise cricket is an improvement from what obtained up to 20 years ago when WI cricketers were tossed to the wolves with very little high class experience under their belt.
Hinds also said that this system will allow for better remuneration for a wider swath of players. And with better remuneration and a more professional set-up comes an expectation of improved returns.
“Well the fact that you have been prepared properly, in a work environment seven days a week, in a competitive market and the fact that you are being compensated decently and when you compare that to other employees in other working fields, I think the emphasis will be on the players to perform at a particular level at, an acceptable international level for the WI so that the WI have better teams representing them,” he said.
Hinds stated that there were changes in this agreement from the original. “I don’t know if I am placed to call them significant but I would say that we started with agreements that were discussed and negotiated by FICA and the ICC … certainly once we pick it up from that angle, it would have given us a wider perspective of what obtains on the international field,” added Hinds.
Hinds said it was not the perfect document for either the WICB or the WIPA “but it is the best one to move cricket forward. It is a working document and as I said, as we move along we are hoping to go into the document and make the relevant changes to make sure that cricket will benefit and both parties remain happy and we can deliver what we both set forward to do — to produce good cricketers and to produce quality cricket in the Caribbean and world class cricketers”. he concluded.

(Trinidad Express).