Oman Cricket to pay its players the unpaid dues since 2024 T20 World Cup claiming the delay was due to procedural formality.
After a lengthy wait, Oman Cricket (OC) has now decided to pay the prize money owed to the men’s T20 World Cup team players, citing “procedural” reasons for the delay. OC said in a statement on Monday that the squad and support workers would get the US$225,000 payment by July 2025.
A year after the June 2024 event in the USA and the Caribbean, it was announced earlier this month that Oman’s players had not received their salaries.
Prize money must be paid to players within 21 days of the board receiving it from the ICC, according to agreements participant boards sign with the ICC for events. Although OC asserted in its statement that “the delay in disbursement was procedural, dependent on formal post-event clarifications from the ICC, which are typically received after global tournaments,” the ICC acknowledged that the funds had been paid to OC on time.
Shortly after the tournament, the players brought up the problem of non-payment, and last October, during the Asia Cup for rising teams, the Oman players decided to take coordinated action. A day before the event started, the players were told to leave after threatening to skip the match.
The majority of the players from that 15-man team were eventually forced to leave Oman, and 11 of them had their central contracts suspended. In this instance, several players were forced to leave the nation once their employment was terminated, as is the case in the majority of Gulf states where residency is linked to employment.
While acknowledging that players had brought up the issue, Oman Cricket claimed that Chairman Pankaj Khimji and other administrators “had repeatedly assured the players that payments would be made in full following the ICC’s confirmation of the allocation and structure.” The players argue that at that point, the board had already fallen four months behind on payments, so its promises had started to seem flimsy.
The board accused the players of putting Oman’s international commitment “at serious risk” by intensifying the conflict and declining to play.
WCA CEO Tom Moffat told, “We are pleased to see that Oman Cricket has put a timeline on paying the players the prize money almost a year after they received the money from the ICC, and almost a year after it should have been paid to the players under the ICC terms of participation.
“Every player in the world should be afforded a safe space to raise concerns and advocate for themselves. It’s incredibly sad that the majority of Oman’s men’s World Cup team have lost their careers, employment, and were in turn forced to leave the country for doing so. WCA will always assist players who come to it for help, especially those who are vulnerable or who face with extremely imbalanced and unhealthy power dynamics.”