Cricket Australia says no last-minute player deal
NEWDELHI: The Australian cricket board confirmed on Friday there would be no eleventh hour breakthrough in a bitter pay dispute with the players’ union, leaving more than 200 leading cricketers uncontracted and the fate of future tournaments in limbo.
Cricket Australia said the union had refused to negotiate, leaving no chance for a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) to be struck before the midnight deadline on Friday.
“Cricket Australia (CA) today acknowledged that a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) will not be agreed before 1 July and repeated its call for the Australian Cricketers’ Association (ACA) to come to the negotiating table and show genuine flexibility in the best interests of the players and the game,” the board said in a statement.
The ACA has blamed CA’s insistence on altering a 20-yearold revenue-share model for the breakdown in talks and has refused to deal with the board’s lead negotiator.
The ACA called on CA CEO James Sutherland to come to the negotiating table this week but the long-serving executive has kept silent since he emailed players in May, informing them they would be “unemployed” if they failed to agree to a new MoU by the June 30 deadline.
Australia’s reputation in the sporting community has been tarnished and it was an unfair situation for the broadcasters, the ACA said.
“Refusing offers of flexibility and to attend mediation says a lot,” ACA president Greg Dyer said in a statement. “As does the refusal of the CA CEO to be involved.
“It says they weren’t fair dinkum. It’s been a case of divide and rule from the start and when that failed the threats started and haven’t stopped. “All of which has failed.” CA improved its offer to players last week, promising more cricketers a share in profits, but the union, which is refusing to budge from its demand for a share of overall revenues, quickly rejected it.
CA has said the revenue-share model is unfit for modern times and is starving funding of grassroots cricket, while players say it has underpinned the game’s growth and prosperity over the past 20 years.