Lara leads squad of 14 for VB Series

Australia will get to see the ICC Champions Trophy winners after all © Getty Images

The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) have announced a squad of 14 to participate in the VB Series which takes place in Australia in January. The squad will leave for Australia on 29 December, and is captained by Brian Lara, while Shivnarine Chanderpaul replaces Ramnaresh Sarwan as vice-captain. It will also mark the first assignment for Bennett King, the West Indies' new coach.

The WICB said, however, that there were a number of issues still unresolved and it had agreed to the terms and conditions outlined for the tour on the basis that some of them were applicable only for this VB triangular series. This, the board said, had also been done in the spirit of compromise urged by the CARICOM Prime Ministerial sub-Committee on Cricket.

The Board was also encouraged by the fact that its major sponsor, Digicel, had accepted a warranty clause, inserted in the contract for the VB Series as a short-term measure, in the interest of sending the best team on tour. This clause is intended to ensure that, during this tour, there will be no actions taken to damage the interests of the sponsor.

In this context, Teddy Griffith, the board president, wrote to the chairman of the Prime Ministerial sub-committee on cricket, Keith Mitchell, the Prime Minister of Grenada, urging him to follow up on his stated commitment to discuss with Cable and Wireless, the implications coming out of the warranty included in the players' contracts for the Australia tour.

Mitchell said that, in his discussions with Cable and Wireless, he had been assured that the company accepted that the West Indies Cricket Board had sole copyright of West Indies Cricket and anything pertinent thereto. He had been further assured that Cable and Wireless would do nothing in the future to display any advertisement, both in the electronic and print form, to give the impression that any relationship between itself and any of the players (both individually and collectively) was in their capacity as members of the West Indies Cricket team.

Team Brian Lara (capt), Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Christopher Gayle, Wavell Hinds, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Marlon Samuels, Dwayne Bravo, Ryan Hinds, Courtney Browne (wk), Ian Bradshaw, Pedro Collins, Mervyn Dillon, Reon King, Xavier Marshall.