Brian Lara: 'dropped' by West Indies after contract dispute © Getty Images

Sixteen senior West Indian cricketers, including Brian Lara, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Chris Gayle, have apparently been dropped for the triangular one-day VB Series in Australia in January, after failing to resolve an ongoing contract dispute with the West Indies Cricket Board.

The players, many of whom starred in last September's thrilling Champions Trophy final victory over England at The Oval, have found themselves at loggerheads with the team's new sponsors, Digicel, who recently signed a multi-million-dollar deal with the WICB.

Several of the players have existing individual endorsement deals with rival companies, including Cable & Wireless, and of the 25 players invited to join a training camp in Barbados, beginning on Monday, only nine have accepted. "The players who did not accept the invitation ruled themselves out of consideration for this tour," said a board spokesman. "This does not prevent them from being considered in the future should they merit inclusion."

The Board added that players were barred from endorsing "a competitor of a WICB major sponsor unless he has a pre-existing agreement with such a competitor that was approved in writing by the WICB". The Board and its players' representatives concluded 18 hours of meetings last week without a resolutionto this issue.

The issue at stake is similar to that which dogged the Indian cricket team prior to the 2003 World Cup - how to provide suitable compensation for players who were forced to forego existing sponsorship deals. The Board added that advertising revenue and personal appearances on behalf of the major sponsor were two possible avenues.

In the meantime, 16 replacement players are likely to be named by the board in the next few days.

West Indies' new head coach, Bennett King, cannot have envisaged this sort of welcome when he took over the role earlier this month. And there is not even any guarantee that the replacements will accept the terms of their contract. Two months on from the most uplifting moment in Caribbean cricket for more than a decade, the team is plunged back into chaos.