Grenada T20 players on strike - Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation

[Anguillan newsboy]

Members of Grenada’s national cricket squad preparing for the start of the Stanford Twenty/20 in January have gone on strike.

The players refused to take to the field for training after their return from a practice series in Trinidad and Tobago last week.

The players have two key demands.

They are asking for monies owed to them from last year’s Stanford twenty/20 competition and they are insisting that they sign contracts before proceeding with further training.

The players also say that they have been asked to forfeit the monies owed to them, about one thousand EC dollars (US$377) per player.

A source close to the players, says they have decided not to attend further training until a players’ contract, promised to them, is made available.

Some of them have also been complaining that they have not been given an opportunity to discuss the problem.

The dispute appears to have forced officials to prematurely abandon training before the Christmas holiday season.

Originally, training should have resumed on December 12 and break on December 20 for the Christmas holidays.

However, since the problem escalated, several players say they have received phone calls from officials of the Grenada Cricket ***ociation (GCA), informing them that official training has been discontinued until the 2nd of January.

Secretary of the Grenada Cricket ***ociation (GCA) Cecil Greenidge, blasted the players’ action during an address to the Windward Islands youth cricketers in St George’s this past weekend.

“Even locally now we have a new trend. Men ain’t thinging until they get contract because money is the end all and the be all for existence,” Greenidge said in an address during the closing ceremony of the just ended Windward Islands Under-15 competition.

“But we can’t go down that road. We can’t go down that road and those in authority must make a determination that the time is now to stop that trend,” he added, without going into details about the dispute.

The 17-man squad lost two matches in a rain-affected five-match series against the Trinidad and Tobago national side which formed part of their preparation for next year’s Stanford 20/20 competition.

Grenada defied the odds and placed fourth in the inaugural event last year, going down in the semi-finals to Guyana, who went on to capture the title.

Grenada open their campaign in the 2008 Stanford Twenty/20 series with a game against Anguilla on February 3.