West Indies Cricket Board Seeks Load to ICC

You might think that global economic slowdown is the reason behind West India Cricket Board (WICB)’s current economic problem. Well, this is not the cast in fact. West Indies cricket board is now facing serious financial crisis because of several reasons. They recently sought help of international cricket council (ICC), asking for a loan of $3m. ICC has also accepted it positively and recommended it to its IDI Board (ICC Development International) to grant the loan.

Recently, WICB got a huge amount from Stanford 20-20 tournament, but they had to spend much of the amount to pay the legal costs occurred due to a legal conflict with team sponsor Digicel.

Hindustantimes reported:

The ICC's Kaushik Das (CFO) and Haroon Lorgat (CEO) have viewed the request favourably and recommended that to the IDI Board (ICC Development International) that the loan be advanced, "repayable in one year by September 2009 at a minimum interest rate".

A WICB source revealed that the Board had to forego their share of prize money from the Stanford games because of a prior agreement to pay off legal costs accrued in expensive litigation involving team sponsors Digicel.

Well, that is very nice that ICC is going to provide some monetary help to West Indies Cricket Board. The main problem of West Indies cricket is that they do not have a huge fan of cricket like India. So, big-money sponsor deal is not possible for WICB. TV right of WICB can be sold out for a huge sum of money and also they do not have a star player like Brian Lara anymore. The harsh reality is that young generation in the island nations are losing their interest for cricket, seeing lack of money in the game. Thus, the quality of cricket is getting deteriorated in West Indies. Stanford tournament has come as a welcome preventive to this problem, but still it is not enough to eradicate the financial problem totally.