Smith speaks up on pay

CRICKET: As the Australian Cricketers Association makes moves to fund its protracted pay battle with Cricket Australia in India, Test captain Steve Smith has broken his silence to declare the players will not buckle.

Smith has been criticised in some corners for his relative absence from the front lines of the biggest issue in Australian cricket which has left about 230 national and state cricketers unemployed for more than a week.

After playing almost non-stop from last October until the early Champions Trophy exit last month, the national captain has been enjoying a long overdue holiday in Europe and the United States, where he also got engaged to long-time girlfriend Dani Willis.

He has maintained contact with the ACA throughout, and even dialled in via video link to the historic players meeting in Sydney last Sunday when the players turned up the pressure on CA to open the door to mediation over the next Memorandum of Understanding.

A lack of movement in talks during the week, however, resulted in players boycotting an Australia A tour of South Africa.

The Herald Sun revealed yesterday that the ACA’s general manager Tim Cruickshank will fly to India this week in a bid to sell the rights to the Australian cricket team to would-be sponsors in India.

Smith said despite efforts to break them, the players would stay united and push to secure the future for not just the elite players, but all cricketers looking to get the very best out of themselves at all levels.

“I’ll say what we as players have been saying for some time now: we are not giving up the revenuesharing model for all players,” Smith wrote in a lengthy Instagram post.