Ken Gordon, the West Indies Cricket Board president, says his board is ready to accept part of the responsibility for the regional team's World Cup failure but has side-stepped suggestions the recent contracts dispute was at fault. "The WICB is the head of cricket and if things go badly we must accept the responsibility. I have absolutely no qualms about that," Gordon said here Tuesday. "The matter of how one deals with that is another matter and if the WICB fails to address this problem comprehensively, it would have failed in its job. But it's not going to do that in the middle of the series. "So the short answer is, yes, the WICB must accept the responsibility or part of the responsibility because it's the head of cricket so I have no problems with that." Gordon, however, avoided suggestions that the contracts row over World Cup monies could have been a factor in the team's string of poor performances in the Super Eight, second round. After sweeping through the first round unbeaten, West Indies have lost all four second round matches to Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and South Africa. Up until the start of the Cricket World Cup in March, the WICB and the players' union, the West Indies Players Union, were yet to reach a settlement on monies for the tournament. Though a high-powered arbitration panel had been called in to decide how the US$11 million from the International Cricket Council should be split, West Indies entered camp, played warm-up matches and contested their first match against Pakistan without contracts. Reprinted from jamaicaobserver.com