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Sport

West Indies players hit with 25% pay cut as Cricket West Indies restructures

Cricket West Indies has cut men's retainer fees by a quarter from October, shortened domestic contracts to seven months and suspended three domestic competitions as the board confronts projected $26m losses.

By Tom Ellery · · 2 min read

Cricket West Indies (CWI) has announced a 25% reduction in retainer fees for men’s players as part of what the board called “a comprehensive counterattack against all the challenges we face financially, developmentally and competitively”, Cricinfo reported.

The cuts, agreed after renegotiation of the final year of the memorandum of understanding with the West Indies Players’ Association (WIPA), take effect from October 2026 and run through September 2027, according to Cricinfo and CaribbeanCricket.com. International players remain on 12-month contracts, but domestic players move to retainer contracts of seven months — October 2026 to April 2027 — down from 12.

The regional body also suspended this year’s men’s Super50 Cup, the 2027 Women’s Super50 and the Women’s T20 Blaze, CaribbeanCricket.com reported. CEO Chris Dehring said the historical structure, under which CWI bears the full cost of every national team and tournament, was “simply unsustainable”, and that separate qualification tournaments for the men’s and women’s events at the 2028 LA Olympics would replace the suspended competitions.

The board recorded a net loss of US$28m for the financial year ending September 2025 and is projecting a US$26m loss for the 2026 cycle, Cricinfo reported. In July CWI received a US$12.82m emergency loan from the International Cricket Council. “We appreciate the spirit of cooperation of the West Indies Players’ Association and the players,” Dehring said. “While not ideal, it is a necessary step towards financial stability.”

The announcement came on the eve of West Indies’ white-ball series in India, the team having arrived in Thiruvananthapuram on Wednesday, Nation News reported.

Sources

More on this topic: all Sport stories

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