Tour a victim of cricket’s pay war
AUSTRALIAN cricket’s bitter pay dispute is no closer to resolution after players took the unprecedented step of refusing to tour.
The Australia A tour to South Africa was scrapped yesterday with cricket hierarchy and the players’ union again trading barbs.
The players, through the Australian Cricketers’ Association, blamed Cricket Australia for their refusal to tour South Africa. But CA, in turn, says it regrets the players’ decision, believing progress this week should have allowed the tour to go ahead.
The cricketers became only the second Australian sporting team to effectively take strike action, following the national women’s soccer team’s boycott of a US tour in 2015.
There have been other boycotts involving Australian cricket teams, but at the behest of government or the sport’s ruling body.
The Government called off Australia’s planned tour of Zimbabwe in 2009 while South Africa’s scheduled 1971 tour of Australia was cancelled amid anti-apartheid protests.
The Australia A squad was due to depart for South Africa today. In boycotting the tour, players such as Usman Khawaja, Glenn Maxwell and Travis Head will miss opportunities to press their selection claims for this summer’s Test series against England.
“The Australia A players have sacrificed their own ambitions for the collective,” the ACA said. “(It’s) an incredibly selfless act that shows their strength and overall commitment to the group.
“All players are deeply disappointed at the behaviour of CA which forces this course of action, given the players would rather be playing for their country.”
About 230 cricketers are effectively unemployed after last weekend’s expiry of a memorandum of understanding, which covered wages.
The ACA again accused CA of refusing mediation in the spat over a future pay model. “Without mediation, it’s hard to see how there can be the progress necessary to reach agreement,” the ACA said.
But CA said discussions this week, which featured the body’s chief executive James Sutherland who had previously been at arm’s length to negotiations, should have paved the way for the Australia A tour.
Australia’s two-Test tour of Bangladesh, scheduled to start on August 27, now looms as the next flashpoint in the dispute over the sport’s funding model. CA wants to abandon the revenue-sharing model of the past 20 years while the players say it must remain.