"The discussions with the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) have been both exhaustive and, to date, fruitless," said Malcolm Gray, president of the International Cricket Council after the world governing body made certain concessions in the existing contract.

"The BCCI remains unable or unwilling to meet its contractual obligations and if anything has gone backwards on what it is prepared to accept from the ICC."

For his part, BCCI president Jagmohan Dalmiya concluded his press conference on Friday evening by saying the ICC was "pushing the Indian Board to the point of impossibility."

And meanwhile, the Indian cricketers -- the individuals most affected by the fracas -- stand silently on the sidelines, watching.

It has raised many questions – but the central one, and the one that is never being spelt out, is this: What precisely is the problem? What is the sticking point, that cricketers in every other country have given the nod to, while the Indian players refuse to budge?

Simply this, that if the Indians sign the contract and live up to the provisions, they will be sued by their existing sponsors -- sponsors, it needs to be pointed out, who they signed with way before the ICC had its brainwave about ambush marketing.

No other international cricketer faces this problem -- which is why this controversy does not echo anywhere else in the world.

The Indian players say the clauses are outrageous. September's ICC Champions Trophy is a good example why. For all teams, the tournament hinged around one single game -- lost that, and your team was out of the tournament, and you personally were off your sponsors' map for a period of 90 days.

Extrapolate from the ICC calendar, and the Global Cricket Corporation's list of restrictions through 2000 to 2007, and you will find that in this fashion, players will be useless to their sponsors for a period of two-and-a-half years out of the seven.

Why then would sponsors lock their money into a player -- especially when you consider that it is the period of highest visibility, during the World Cups and Champions Trophy tournaments, that the restrictions come into force?

This is the question the players ask -- on what grounds, and by what right, did the ICC sell away their rights without even consulting them? And how can the ICC sell something it does not own?

The ICC has offered to recognize the conflict between the official sponsors and the personal sponsors of Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag, as per contracts the players had entered into prior to the BCCI signing its agreement with the ICC.

ICC communications manager Jon Long explained that the same concession was not made to the seven players who endorse Samsung, because that contract was signed in March-April after the BCCI was informed of the player terms in the contract.
 
That the players did not know the details at the time, because the BCCI did not inform them, is another story.

Part of the response to this offer was for the Indian players to move away from their previous undertakings, which meant they had to block their personal sponsors for the duration of the event, to blocking them only on the days on which India plays.

This is the solution the players see as fair -- that on days they are playing and therefore live on television, the ads of their personal sponsors, which are in competition with the official ones, should not be aired on television channels broadcasting the match.

The argument behind their thinking is that it should not make any difference to either the ICC or the GCC if the ad of a personal sponsor is aired on a language television channel, or in fact on any channel that is not broadcasting the match.

Thus, the question they are asking is, 'competition' between personal sponsors and official sponsors happen if the former use the same vehicle as the latter to air their ads. How does it become competition, when ads are on different television channels? Is it the ICC's claim that at a time when, say, Doordarshan is airing an India game which is spliced with official ads, people are going to switch to watching some other channel simply to see some player in an ad?

The players also point out that the longer this standoff continues, the more likely their personal sponsors will run out of patience and file suits against them. Neither the ICC nor the BCCI, the players point out, have offered to fight any cases that may be filed against them in the event they sign the ICC contracts.

The BCCI has offered to compensate players for any losses they may incur through dishonoring their contracts with personal sponsors is hollow -- because these amounts cannot be quantified.

Take, as an example, a player who has been signed on for say Rs 10 million for seven years. Who decides how much the loss to that sponsor is because said sponsor cannot use the player during the high visibility tournaments? The sponsor will argue that it is during a World Cup or a Champions Trophy that the entire cricket world watches, and therefore that is when they get maximum mileage and therefore, that their loss equals 75 per cent of the total amount -- in such a case, will the BCCI pay that Rs 7.5 million?

And remember, these amounts are examples, and are conservative -- the actual amounts being talked of here are far larger.

The general feeling among the players is that this is not about ambush marketing, and such.

They believe the ICC and the GCC are, together, playing a longer, deeper, more far reaching game. That the underlying idea driving this conglomerate is to bring about a situation where they have a monopoly on all cricketers, a situation where sponsors desirous of using them can only do so through the conglomerate, and not through individual players. And that the conglomerate will use this monopoly to favor some, and shut out other, sponsors -- for instance, by virtue of having signed on Pepsi and LG as its global partners till 2007, the GCC has effectively shut out Coke and Samsung and all other companies in these fields from the cricketing scene for the next five years.

As far as the ICC's final offer is concerned, the players and BCCI are speaking in one single voice now -- and what that voice is saying is that the period of the contract should remain effective only for the duration of the tournament itself, without any further moratorium before or after.

The players argue that if need be, there can be two sets of rules, two types of contracts -- one for the Indians, another for the rest. They are not, they point out, saying they should be treated differently from the rest -- what they are saying is that elsewhere, cricketers are not affected, therefore they are willing to sign the existing contract whereas the Indian players are in fact impacted upon, and therefore it is not fair to hold a gun to their heads.

So, as far as the players are concerned, it can be a revision of the entire contract, to cover only the period of the tournament itself, and this revised contract can be made available to all players everywhere; or if the ICC insists on not backing down, then the Indian players can be given a separate contract on the above terms.

This, they point out, is fair enough since 80 per cent of the money in the ICC coffers comes from Indian sponsors. For example, of the $550 million that the ICC has collected as sponsorship money, $400 million comes from India alone.

To see why the existing contracts are deemed unfair, look at the question from another angle. Each member nation will make $8 million to $10 million per year from the ICC.

Twentyfive percent of this will be given to the players by the Board -- which is $2.5 million tops. This will then be divided among all the players who have played for the country in the year, that is, between 20 to 30 players at least.

So what does that work out to per player?

And to get this pittance, the player has to forego his personal endorsements -- in other words, not only will the ICC even provide a living wage, it also seeks to prevent the players from earning their own money, is the argument.

When senior players were asked why, given the extent of disagreement with the contract, they agreed to participate in the ICC Champions Trophy in September, they said it was as a gesture of goodwill, and because they did not want to devalue, or spoil, the tournament.

They pointed out that at the time, they had also been assured that the matter would be sorted out immediately after the Champions Trophy, to the satisfaction of all concerned.

Three months later, and with another big event looming, the matter remains where it was, they point out -- the only forward movement has been an ICC ultimatum, which does not qualify as "sorting out to the satisfaction of all concerned."

The BCCI has called a general body meeting on December 25, in Kolkata to discuss the stand off.

Behind the scenes, it is becoming increasingly clear that the players have run out of 'goodwill' and are in no mood to be shoved around by the ICC any longer.

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