The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) was today issued with a stern warning that legal action will follow if it attempts to sanction players based on the findings of the just-released task force report on the controversial tour of India.
Queen’s Counsel Ralph Thorne, who is representing a number of the senior players, today put the WICB on notice that if the players were to experience any backlash coming out of the recommendations in the report, he would be seeking legal recourse.
While the task force has sought to blame both sides for the decision to pull out of the Indian tour, it said the players must shoulder a “significant proportion” of it.
However, Thorne has further warned the Board to tread carefully with his clients.
Queen’s Counsel Ralph Thorne
“There is recourse, and if I observe any kind of recrimination springing from a process and a report that is flawed, I would seek further recourse, whether it is by way of arbitration or whether it is by way of the courts,” the prominent attorney warned.
“Administrative law is not a mystery to me and I would know precisely what to do,” he added.
In an interview with Barbados TODAY, he also said he was not pleased with the investigative process, especially considering that the task force went ahead and interviewed his clients without prior reference to him.
“They [the recommendations] are flawed. The task force itself has misconceived the relationship between the WICB and the players [and] I don’t know that they can find any fact based on a hasty investigation.
“They cannot make any conclusive finding based on an expedited investigation, an investigation that just lasted for a few interviews,” he stressed, adding that “nobody knows who they interviewed. Nobody knows what was the content of the interviews. Nobody knows who from the board they interviewed. Nobody knows who from the management team they interviewed”.
The Queen’s Counsel said the public felt that this incident was so serious as to merit a full quasi-judicial inquiry.
“And they [WICB] have sacrificed a full quasi judicial inquiry for some brief investigation comprising of a few short interviews. I don’t know what findings you can make based on that,” the prominent Barbadian lawyer contended.