Aussies in pay deadlock

AUSTRALIA’S top cricketers have effectively become unemployed five months before the start of the ashes after failing to reach an agreement in bitter revenue-sharing talks.

The contracts with Cricket australia ran out at midnight on June 30 after a nine-month impasse that has driven a wedge between the country’s cricketers and administrators.

The first Test against England starts on november 23, so a solution to australian cricket’s biggest crisis since Kerry Packer’s World Series in the late 1970s is urgent.

Josh Hazlewood, one of australia’s best-paid players, said: ‘It’s going to leave a bitter taste but we are willing to do what we need to.’ The row centres on Cricket australia’s plan to pay only the top male and female players a sliding- scale share of revenue generated by the board. Cricketers lower down the ladder would get a fixed salary.

But the players’ union, the australian Cricketers’ association, wants all cricketers to benefit from future TV deals and contend that a fixed fee will deny them their due. Top players — including Steve Smith, david Warner and women’s captain Meg lanning — insist those below them in the hierarchy should not miss out.

Ca insist that domestic players will be paid a higher fixed rate under their proposal. a statement said they were ‘dismayed that ACA rhetoric has burdened current players with an unfair sense of responsibility for defending a decades-old pay model that no longer suits the modern game.’