Pay deal expert backs players’ revenue fight

AUSTRALIA’S cricketers are fighting for the right cause but their payment system is still ripe for a major shake-up.

This is the view of James Erskine, the entrepreneur hired by the players to guide them through the last great pay war of 1997 in which they secured a deal that guaranteed them roughly a quarter of the game’s revenue in Australia.

Cricket Australia wants to abolish that system in the next memorandum of understanding while the players are demanding it must continue, providing an impasse that could result in strike action for the tour of Bangladesh in August or next season’s Ashes.

“Without the players, Cricket Australia have nothing, so they should realise a percentage of overall revenue for the players is totally fair,’’ Erskine said.

“But they have a situation where some of the top players can get up to $2.5 million and are not performing and that has to be looked at.

“There should be more bonuses for performances. I’m not saying that money goes back to Cricket Australia if the player does not perform but back into the player’s pot.

“I would flatten out the contract payments so that the gap between the No.1 and No.20 player on the list does not span from $2.5 million to a few hun- dred thousand dollars. It’s a team game.”

Erskine hopes the dispute does not lead to strike action by the players because it might turn the public against them.

“Players can say they are going to strike but how do you make it work? Do it on the first day of the Boxing Day Test and they will p--- off 100,000 people at the ground and another million on television, and if they do it at the Prime Ministers XI no one cares,” he said.

“The average wage is $48,000 and if someone getting paid $1.2 million a year wants to strike, you are not going to get sympathy from the man driving the bus.

“Both sides have to have a hard look at themselves. The players are not going to get the sympathy from the general public. Last time part of the issue was that the Darren Lehmanns were getting $35,000 to play interstate cricket but those days are gone.’’