Groundsmen at Kolkata's famous Eden Gardens have threatened to commit suicide if the cricket authorities do not meet their financial demands, including five months' back pay, Indian media reported on Wednesday.

About 20 groundstaff who are on the payroll of a private company, have written to the regional cricket body threatening they would have to "take some extreme step like committing suicide", according to Kolkata's daily The Telegraph.

A groundstaff supervisor, Anadi Khatua, said they were daily wage employees of Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) until the private company hired them, the PTI news agency reported.

He blamed cricket officials for not keeping their promise to settle the groundsmen's claims after the lucrative Twenty20 Indian Premier League [Images] competition, which ended in May.

But a cricket official said the protest was merely designed to bring pressure on the CAB to include them on its payroll.

"They have a one-point programme," CAB's joint secretary Amitabh [Images] Banerjee told Reuters. "The whole world is going on outsourcing and it is impractical."

He said the protestors were refusing to collect their salaries from their employers and dismissed their threat to end their lives as "sentimental".