ICC offers to end contract row

The International Cricket Council has offered to end the row with India over World Cup contracts, a source said on Tuesday.

A specially convened World Cup contracts committee of the ICC agreed by teleconference at the weekend to clear the way for India's participation in the competition, which begins in South Africa on February 9.

It will accept India's refusal to sign up to its World Cup sponsorship rules in their entirety in return for a reimbursement from their board of any future claims for compensation arising from that.

This proposal will be endorsed by a full board meeting of the ICC on Friday, the source said.

"The ICC World Cup contracts board has decided to go along this route in the hope that it can finally end the dispute with India, clearing the way for the Indian team to take part in the World Cup," said the source.

"That is the prime objective and you can view this as a large olive branch from the ICC to the BCCI [Board of Control for Cricket in India]."

India's top players, backed by their board, had refused to accept a suspension of their individual sponsorships just before and during the competition, arguing that the ICC had no right to sell their image rights.

Their stance won the support of other players around the world and they delayed the return of the ICC contracts, eventually sending in 'substantially altered' papers which were, in effect, a challenge to the governing body's authority.

"The ICC had two options after that," said the source, who has been privy to the board's deliberations since the contracts were returned by the Indian players before a January 14 deadline.

"It either took the 'nuclear option' of handing them back to the BCCI and setting a new deadline for them to be returned without alteration," he said.

"Or it went down the road of a ceasefire, accepting the altered contracts but stipulating that any claim for compensation from official World Cup sponsors, which was the direct result of the BCCI's action, be met by their purse at a later date."

All ICC member countries are expected to earn around $9 million for competing at this year's World Cup, which is being co-hosted by South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya.

"The extent of this would be decided either by the Court of Arbitration in Sport [in Lausanne] or with the ICC acting as mediators," the source added.

"The BCCI have indicated in the past that they would accept this course of action."

The source said a BCCI refusal to agree to reimburse official sponsors, after arbitration, could result in its suspension from the ICC -- if this was agreed by a conference of all its members.

The ICC board set up to resolve the sponsorship row with India included many of the biggest hitters in the governing body's hierarchy.

These included president Malcolm Gray, chief executive Malcolm Speed, Australian board chief Bob Merriman, Pakistan board's ICC vice-president Eshan Mani, Percy Sonn, president of the South African board and Justice Ahmed Ebrahim, a high-ranking judge in Zimbabwe.

The seeds of the dispute were sown two years ago when the ICC agreed a $550 million deal with the Global Cricket Corporation for sponsorship rights until 2007.

The GCC stipulated that World Cup and ICC Trophy sponsors should have a clear run during those events and that players should at these times cease activities for individual backers.

But Indian players, who earn far more from advertising than from playing, won support from the board and its president Jagmohan Dalmiya in opposing this measure towards the end of last year.

A compromise was reached for the 2002 ICC Trophy but the BCCI and ICC positions looked firmly entrenched running up to the World Cup, with neither side willing to back down in what was considered by observers as a fundamental struggle for power.

"The ICC hopes this will finally bring an end to all the disagreement," said the source.

The World Cup, involving 14 teams, is due to be officially launched on Feb 8 and runs until March 23.