Changes to the nature of the contracts that New Zealand's players have with New Zealand Cricket were behind the 24-hour delay in the naming of the sides to tour the West Indies.

The sides were finally announced today after discussions on an interim contract went longer than anticipated.

As a result of the discussions, 20 players have now been placed on interim contracts until after the ICC Champions Trophy tournament in Sri Lanka in September.

The contracts were finalised this morning when matters of player payment were resolved.

Negotiations between New Zealand Cricket, the major associations and the New Zealand Cricket Players' Association over a longer term contract will continue during the duration of the interim contract.

"We had discussions to review the player contract system's structure and of details within that structure," NZC chief executive Martin Snedden said.

"This is the first time this has been undertaken and it was not possible to complete this before the West Indies tour," he said.

"There were a lot of issues that had to be thrashed out for the first time.

Snedden added that he had not wanted NZC to suffer from something like the "Brad Thorn" situation suffered by rugby last year when a player was named in the All Blacks but then withdrew because he didn't know if he had the commitment to play at that level.

The interim contract would offer some security to players for their short-term future.

Those players contracted are: Andre Adams, Nathan Astle, Shane Bond, Ian Butler, Stephen Fleming, Chris Harris, Matthew Hart, Robbie Hart, Paul Hitchcock, Matt Horne, Craig McMillan, Chris Martin, Chris Nevin, Jacob Oram, Mark Richardson, Mathew Sinclair, Scott Styris, Daryl Tuffey, Daniel Vettori and Lou Vincent.

Snedden said another reason for the delay had been the original decision to have discussions when the players returned from their tour of Pakistan, but once that tour was abandoned after the Karachi bomb blast he had wanted to allow players time to recover from that experience and that had resulted in a tight time frame this week for the discussions.

Snedden said he had been contacted by several players in the last few days who were expressing real excitement about the West Indies and who took the opportunity to reassure him that they wanted to go.

"They are really excited about the trip. They watched parts of the West Indies series with India on television while they were in Pakistan and they are anticipating a real challenge when they go and they are really looking forward to getting into it," he said.

© CricInfo