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Lara, Hooper axed from Windies team

The West Indies Cricket Board has fired Brian Lara as team captain, and Carl Hooper as his deputy, while taking a tough stance against a revolt by players about fees for the upcoming three-month tour of South Africa.

Pat Rousseau, the Windies board's president, yesterday said the two players would not take part in the South Africa tour, and that selectors would meet on November 13 to replace them. The tour is scheduled to start on November ten with a one-day international.

Only seven of the team's 16 players arrived in Johannesburg yesterday. The rest, including former captain Courtney Walsh and paceman Curtley Ambrose, defied the board's directive to travel to South Africa on Tuesday.

Rousseau said senior players still in England would have ten per cent of their tour fee deducted, and junior players would be docked five per cent, if they went on to play in S'Africa.

Rousseau said the players' move has "dealt a serious blow to West Indies cricket and the public.''

There was no immediate response from the players, who were represented at the Antigua meeting by David Holford, the newly appointed chief executive officer of the West Indies Player's Association and himself a former Windies all rounder, and by association secretary and former Test star Roland Holder.

Walsh, who is president of the players' association, said in a telephone call from his London hotel that the association would issue a statement, probably from its Barbados headquarters, this morning.

In a statement Tuesday, the WICB implied that the dissent was limited to Lara, a controversial but brilliant batsman who had earlier pulled out of the team two days before its departure for the 1996 Australia tour and, in another instance, abandoned the team following the third Test match on a 1995 tour of England, and Hooper, who also quit the England tour.

But it has become clear that many more top players are involved, enough that a pullout would hurt the West Indies' chances against the tough S'Africans, who beat them in Sunday's finals of the Wills Cup in Bangladesh.

The board also has a tougher task because it is not negotiating with individuals but with the players' association, which recently got a large cash contribution from the board, an office from the Barbados government and, on June one, appointed its first executive officer. The association could be looking for an opportunity to show its mettle.

Neither side will discuss details of fees. But the Barbados based Nation newspaper yesterday said the players want to be paid above their tour fee for one-day internationals and for a one-week training camp to be held before the November ten start of the South Africa tour, increased meal allowances and some guarantee of security in Johannesburg, where two Pakistani players were mugged while on tour last year.

The Nation quoted unnamed Caribbean sources as saying that players were upset that they would be paid less for the South African tour than their 1996-1997 Australia tour, which also was a five-Test series.

The Nation said those who had played in less than 15 Test matches would be paid about 16,000 dollars for South Africa, compared to 22,000 to 25,000 dollars for the Australia tour and senior players 50,000 to 60,000 dollars, compared to 60,000 to 70,000 dollars for Australia.

Still, the West Indians are believed to be the highest paid cricketers in the world, after the Australians.

The last major revolt by the Windies players came in 1978, when the then-poorly paid islanders snubbed the regional team and contracted to Australian magnate Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket.

When that was disbanded, the players negotiated substantially better contracts with the board and began a 15-year winning streak that had many thinking they were invincible.

UNI