Cricket: Lara Spurns West Indian Call

West Indies' cricket was plunged into fresh crisis last night when Brian Lara was left out of the team for the first Test of the home series against South Africa, which starts on the last day of the month.

Lara, 35 and with 112 Test caps, and six other leading players - Dwayne Bravo, Fidel Edwards, Chris Gayle, Ravi Rampaul, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Dwayne Smith - were told they were ineligible for selection because of their endorsement contracts with Cable & Wireless, a competitor of the team sponsors Digicel.

Lara, however, had been cleared to play on Friday because his contract with C&W, dating back to 2003, was "entered into with the constructive knowledge of the board and with its blessing".

He was given 24 hours to decide on his availability. But he was ruled out of consideration yesterday after saying he would only appear alongside the other players involved in the dispute.

The West Indies Cricket Board said: "Brian Lara gave a non-committal response to the invitation to make himself available for the match, in which he neither accepted nor rejected the invitation. In his response, Lara put a proposition to the board that could not have been entertained because it would require players to be selected on the team who were ineligible due to the nature of their personal endorsement contracts. In the circumstances, the board has decided that Lara not be included in the team for the first Test."

This is the latest development in a four-month wrangle over sponsorship contracts which threatens to destabilise the already fragile structure of cricket in the Caribbean, just two years before the next World Cup is held there.

The trouble started in July when Cable and Wireless's 18-year sponsorship contract with the WICB ended. The British telephone services company was replaced by their aggres sive new competitors Digicel, who have agreed to pay $20m (£10.4m) over four years.

In November, leading up to the West Indies' tour of Australia for the VB Series, the hosts made it clear that they were reluctant to entertain a second string team. The Caricom (Caribbean Community) prime ministers' subcommittee on cricket became involved and saved the day. As it was, the full strength West Indies team won only one game and failed to reach the final.

This, however, was only a temporary solution. The WICB president Teddy Griffith said that the seven players would no longer be considered for selection unless the board was satisfied that their deals were "unquestionably in the nature of individual contracts", and not tied to the team.

A weak and clearly inept WICB is now under intense pressure, not only from the aggressive players union but also from governments and public opinion.

West Indies are already bottom of the rankings of the well-established Test nations, with only Zimbabwe and Bangladesh below them. The quality of domestic first-class cricket has also plummeted. As Tony Becca, a veteran journalist on Jamaica's Daily Gleaner, said: "In my lifetime the standard has never been so low."