ICC blinks but players and BCCI keep staring hard

(In Mumbai, though, Speed was less expansive on the future. ‘‘For each event there is a separate agreement. (But) they are substantially the same. There may be some minor changes. But it’ll substantially be the same because, having entered into the agreement for $550 million (until 2007), having guaranteed the sponsors they will have exclusive rights, there is not much room to move.’’)

‘‘This agreement has never been designed to commit players for other events. Agreements with boards and players are done on an event-by-event basis’’, ICC spokesman Brendan McClements said in the release. However slight the shift, this could be the ‘budge’ the Indian players had said last night they were seeking.

Today, speaking from Leeds, where the players were preparing for tomorrow’s third Test, their spokesman Ravi Shastri told The Indian Express: ‘‘We would like to wait and see. The contracts the players were offered were undemocratic so they protested but if the ICC and the BCCI are serious about ending the stalemate, so are we. The bottom line is that the players want to play, but they won’t sign till certain references to their personal endorsements are dropped. That’s the final word from their side.’’

And that may well be the final word till Monday, when the Test ends. Several players contacted by this paper said they were focussing squarely on the match ahead, the contracts issue could wait. The players have so far — regardless of rank — remained one. The letter they had sent to the Board on Monday was signed by the 16-member team and both Dinesh Mongia and Mohammad Kaif, currently in England.

The BCCI officials have been working the lines, trying to contact each of the players — those in England and in India — but some have evaded the calls. ‘‘The BCCI is trying to put pressure on the junior players in the side as they can’t say no either to them or to the seniors in the side’’, one player said.

In Bangalore, BCCI chief Jagmohan Dalmiya — looking far from his usually composed self — said the Indian players had been asked to agree to the ICC’s terms for just this one tournament. ‘‘After this, we would all come to the negotiation table. Even ICC chief Malcolm Speed agreed to this. But Anil Kumble and Saurav Ganguly, the two Indian players that I have been talking to most of the time, have so far refused to go along.’’ ‘‘We have got some concessions from the ICC. They want the Champions Trophy to go through and then sit down and discuss further’’, Dalmiya said.