West Indies are in India for eight games, and their players take a 25% pay cut from next month
Cricket West Indies has cut men’s international retainers by a quarter and suspended this season’s Super50 and T20 Blaze, with the ODI side heading to a World Cup qualifier in 2027.
Sep 26, 2026
West Indies play India in Thiruvananthapuram on Sunday, and from next month their centrally contracted players will be paid a quarter less. Cricket West Indies announced a 25% cut to men’s international retainer fees this week, running from October 2026 to September 2027, as part of a restructuring that also shuts down this season’s men’s Super50 and women’s T20 Blaze.
The players agreed to it. The cut came out of renegotiating the final year of the current memorandum of understanding with the West Indies Players’ Association, and chief executive Chris Dehring thanked them for it. “We appreciate the spirit of cooperation of the West Indies Players’ Association and the players who have demonstrated their total understanding of the circumstances we all face,” he said. “While not ideal, it is a necessary step towards financial stability.”
How bad the money is
CWI lost US$28 million in the financial year to September 2025 and expects to lose US$26 million in the 2026 cycle. In July the ICC approved a loan to CWI at its annual meeting in Edinburgh, which tells you how short of cash the board is.
Dehring blamed geography for a lot of it. West Indies is not one country, and every domestic tournament means flying squads, officials and staff between islands. CWI has been paying for all of it, from age-group sides to the senior teams, men and women. “Over eighty million US dollars has been spent by Cricket West Indies with domestic airlines over the past 15 years,” he said, and not one of those airlines has given a dollar back in sponsorship.
Domestic players take a hit too. They move from 12-month retainers to seven-month ones, October to April.
No Super50, with a qualifier coming
This is the part that is hard to square. The Super50 was due to start in November. It is the region’s domestic 50-over competition, and the ODI side is heading to a World Cup qualifier in February and March 2027, because it is not in the top eight of the rankings. The men’s team missed the 2023 World Cup altogether.
CWI’s plan is to replace that with a series of white-ball games against a visiting England A side in November, followed by an ODI camp. That is fine for the players already in the squad. It does nothing for the fringe players who needed a Super50 season to push their way in, and a qualifier is exactly the kind of tournament where depth gets tested.
There is an Olympic twist as well. The Caribbean countries enter the 2028 Los Angeles Games separately, not as West Indies, and CWI is replacing the lost domestic events with invitational qualifying tournaments for them. The individual boards, not CWI, will pay for those.
The Carlos Brathwaite line
Dehring finished his statement by comparing the moment to Brathwaite’s four sixes in a row in the last over of the 2016 T20 World Cup final. “To go for sixes where singles, twos or even fours won’t suffice,” he said.
It is a good line, and I understand why a board in this much trouble wants to sound bold. But Brathwaite’s sixes won a final. Cutting pay and cancelling a tournament is the opposite kind of move. It is a side in trouble trying to stay in the game, and West Indies have been in that position for a long time now.
Shai Hope’s squad arrived in Thiruvananthapuram on Wednesday. After the first ODI on Sunday, the series moves to Guwahati on 30 September and New Chandigarh on 3 October, and then there are five T20Is.