West Indies face sponsor crisis

In startling revelations in a leaked memorandum report, several West Indies players have been accused of paying more attention to women than to cricket during the VB Series in Australia. The accusations were made by Richard Nowell, the representative of Digicel, who was on tour with the team in Australia.

The memorandum made scornful remarks about the West Indian players being hostile and having more telephone numbers of women than runs, which hampered them from playing competitive cricket. "They are [the most] poor ambassadors from any representative team I have come across in my six years, working in seven different sports," he was reported as saying on the Caribbeancricket.com website. "As sponsorship manager, I am deeply concerned as to the length of the road Digicel needs to travel to begin to gain benefit from their US$20million investment."

Digicel started their five-year sponsorship last month, and have injected around US$20million into West Indies cricket. If the claims made in the report are confirmed then they could threaten the future of the whole deal.

Nowell was also upset with the attitude of a few players, and felt "alienated" as the sponsor's representative. Nowell apparently mentioned in his assessment report that on the eve of the match against Australia in Brisbane, he heard numerous doors banging and female voices along the players' hotel corridor well after 1am.

"Perhaps more astounding," he said, "following the team's defeat against Pakistan, the player rooming next to me had company 20 minutes after returning from a crushing defeat." West Indies were eventually eliminated from the tournament, with only one win in six matches. "As a former professional cricketer and having toured with England on three occasions, I know men need to have fun while on tour, but not at the expense of their performance. Even in Perth, the most crucial time of the tour, one player had flown in a girl from Adelaide."

Nowell had a frank conversation with Bennett King, the new coach, making him aware of the huge challenge that lies ahead of him, and concluded: "Bennett King has a huge culture change to effect."

Nowell also slammed the West Indies Cricket Board. "They must also address the nuts and bolts of the sponsorship contract," he said. "With no relationship, access or support from the captain, Brian Lara, [Chris] Gayle and [Ramnaresh] Sarwan, the highest-profiled players who should be at the forefront of the sponsorship ... our current rights have negligible value, if any."