The West Indies Cricket Board will appeal to the bosses of the Indian Premier League this week to prevent them from losing key players for the upcoming Australia series.

WICB Chief Executive Dr. Donald Peters is concerned that captain Chris Gayle and former skippers Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan could miss the first two Tests against Australia in Jamaica on May 22-26 and Antigua on May 30-June 3 because of their commitments in the inaugural IPL from April 16.

“We are aware that we may lose the players for the first two Tests, and I asked the selectors to be cognisant of this, and to try to put batsmen on the side that could replace Gayle, Chanderpaul, and Sarwan,” Peters said.

“There is a real threat that if the players’ teams reach the (IPL) final, they could be gone for 44 days, so we are really worried about this.

“I am heading to Dubai for an International Cricket Council meeting and I will talk to the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) about this and the effect of the IPL.

“Cricket administrators around the world are worried about the IPL, particularly New Zealand and West Indies because IPL takes place in the middle of when our seasons occur. But all of us stand to lose a significant amount of players.

“Given the amount of money involved, it certainly destabilises the infrastructure of cricket. It’s not fair to the players, and it’s not fair to the national teams.

“But this is capitalism at its best, free market enterprise at its best, and we now instead of crying have to find a way to make it work, so that we win, and they win. But right now we are losing.”

Gayle is to play for Kolkata with the likes of Indian Sourav Ganguly and Australia captain Ricky Ponting, Sarwan is with Mohali along with Brett Lee and Yuvraj Singh and Chanderpaul is to play for Bangalore under the captaincy of India star Rahul Dravid.