The International Cricket Council gave its final offer on the contracts issue to the Board of Control for Cricket in India on Thursday, incorporating a series of concessions, and threatened it with penalties if it fails to ensure the participation of its best available team in the next year's World Cup.

The concessions include a 25-day reduction in the period after an ICC tournament for which the ambush marketing clause would be applied.

Under the original clause, the players were barred from endorsing products which were in a conflict of interest to the official sponsors of the tournament for a period of 30 days before the event, during the event and 30 days after it.

But, the clause would now be valid only for five days after the event, the ICC said in a statement.

The validity period of the image clause, under which the official sponsors were allowed to use player images till six
months after an ICC event, has also been reduced to three months.

Some more unspecified restrictions have been imposed on the use of player images by the ICC sponsors in order "to avoid any suggestion of a personal endorsement by the players".

In making its offer, the ICC World Cup Contracts Committee (WCCC) emphasised that the BCCI remains obligated to both participate in the ICC Cricket World Cup 2003 and to send its best team to the event, the statement said.

ICC president Malcolm Gray said the WCCC has also advised the BCCI that if it fails to meet its commitments it will face the potential of large compensation claims being made against it.

"It is impossible to quantify the level of claims before the event but it is clear that if the BCCI does not meet its obligations and there are damage claims made as a result, the BCCI faces the potential of these claims being made against it for not delivlering on its contract," Gray was quoted as saying in the statement.

The ICC rejected the BCCI's request for a seven-day extension to the December 31 deadline for naming its final 15 players for the World Cup and stressed that the "deadlines in place on the
BCCI are exactly the same as for all other boards".

It also withdrew a few India-specific concessions in the contracts clause, offered as a last-ditch effort to accomodate BCCI's objections, since the Indian board was not interested in those.

These concessions allowed the Indian players, like Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag, to continue promoting the
companies, which are in a conflict of interest with the official sponsors, during the tournament except on the days
when India is playing a match. But the BCCI had rejected the offer.

"In light of this rejection, the ICC has reverted to the initial series of concessions to ensure that there is consistency across all countries in what is being offered," the statement said.

 ICC Chief Executive Malcolm Speed said he was disappointed when the offer was rejected by the BCCI.

"Having offered this additional and significant concession to India, it was disappointing to find ourselves further apart than before," Speed was quoted as saying in the statement.

Gray said months of negotiations with the BCCI had failed to throw a solution to the issue and the proposals put forward by the Indian board would have "undermined the integrity of the agreement ICC has with its commercial partners".

"The discussions with the BCCI have been both exhaustive and, to date, fruitless," Gray said.

 "The ICC has sent two delegations to India to discuss the issue, negotiated a number of significant concessions with its
sponsors and sought at all times to be flexible and pragmatic in its dealings with the BCCI," he said.

"Despite these steps, the BCCI remains unable or unwilling to meet its contractual obligations and if anything it has gone backwards on what it is prepared to accept from the ICC.

"In light of the stance taken by the Indian board, the ICC World Cup Contract Committee had no option but to advise
the BCCI there were no further concessions possible and that on the basis of what is on offer the BCCI has clear and
compelling contractual agreements the ICC is now looking for it to fulfill," he said.

Speed said the ICC is now waiting for BCCI to announce its squad for the World Cup.

"As with all boards, the BCCI must notify the ICC by December 31 of its final 15 players for the ICC Cricket World
Cup 2003," Speed said. "It then has up until January 14, 2003 to lodge the signed Player Terms for each of these players."

The Contract row - the complete coverage