Warner warns pay row could leave Australia without an Ashes team
David Warner has warned that Australia “may not have a team for the Ashes” as the pay dispute between the players and the national board escalates.
Warner, the Australia vice-captain, has also said the players will look for Twenty20 deals in England and the Caribbean this summer if the issue is not resolved.
The players are demanding the retention of the revenue-share model by which they receive 20 per cent of Cricket Australia’s income. The board is proposing to pay the players a fixed amount instead. James Sutherland, the chief executive of Cricket Australia, said last week that if the new deals were not signed by June 30, the board would stop paying the players.
The board has also tried to tie players to long-term central contracts that would prevent them from playing in the Indian Premier League. Warner, currently playing in the IPL, described the offer as “laughable”.
He told Melbourne’s The Age: “If it gets to the extreme, they might not have a team for the Ashes. I really hope they can come to an agreement... we don’t really want to see this panning out like that, where we don’t have a team [and] we don’t have cricket in the Australian summer. It is up to Cricket Australia to deal with the ACA [Australian Cricketers’ Association]. It’s obviously in their hands. For us as cricketers, if we don’t have contracts, we are going to have to find cricket to play somewhere else.
“A few boys might go over to play the Caribbean Premier League and I think there could be some of the England Twenty20s on as well. We want to keep participating for our country as much as we can, but if we don’t have a job, we have to go and find some cricket elsewhere.”
The players’ contracts run out after the Champions Trophy. The Natwest Blast starts on July 7 and is played in a block until Aug 25, a dedicated window that makes playing in England this summer more attractive to overseas players.
The Australian players have already boycotted any Ashes promotional
Sounding alarm: David Warner says players’ dispute with board may become ‘extreme’
work this summer and the tension between the board and its stars threatens to overshadow their Champions Trophy campaign.
It has dragged on for months and will be a test case for other boards. In the past, cricketers relied on payments from their home board for playing international cricket but now they can earn as much, if not more, playing in the IPL which is why CA offered its players threeyear deals on the understanding they would forego playing in India.
“It was quite laughable when I heard about it,” said Warner. “It is fantastic with the security but you can’t just try and stop people from playing other tournaments.
“We understand where they are coming from, they would like their best players and contracted players to have that rest. Obviously, there’s too much cricket being played internationally.”