There will be changes to way in which Cricket West Indies awards retainer contracts following backlash to the recent announcements of players who received contracts for the coming year.

Eighteen players were awarded contracts including newcomers to the Test side – Joshua Da Silva, Nkrumah Bonner and Kyle Mayers – but members of the public and at least one territorial body, who questioned why certain players were overlooked.

The Guyana Cricket Board write to CWI requesting the criteria used to select players awarded contracts after Shimron Hetmyer, Keemo Paul, Romario Shepherd and Veerasammy Permaul were among the players left out.

The situation sparked a war of words between the GCB and Chief Selector Roger Harper.

However, according to Dr Kishore Shallow, there will be changes to the system now used by the time the next contract period comes around.

“I would say that we are looking at the system for awarding grades and so on for the contracts. I expect that for the next contractual period we will have an improved system in terms of how we award these contracts,” said Dr Shallow while speaking on Mason and Guest in Barbados on Tuesday.

He revealed that the idea of improving the system was already being discussed at the highest level of the CWI.

“The Director of Cricket, Jimmy Adams, myself and others have been involved in that process over the last few months and we have been working closely with WIPA (West Indies Players Association) as well, who want to ensure that we are all on a level playing field both from the CWI side and the player side,” he said.