As the standoff between Australian Cricket Association (ACA), staff continues with its national cricket board Cricket Australia (CA), the board has invited the ACA members including Clea Smith and Jodie Fields, who are holding an all-important position in the players’ association and had have been the part of women’s World Cup-winning squad in the recent past.
The Australian women team is expected to attend the gala event on June 3 (Saturday), as it would be held at the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, to felicitate the players, who had done quite well in the recent past, as they’ll be further awarded medals for their respective achievements for the national in general in the field of cricket.
Sutherland revealed under the new pay deal, CA is desperately looking to spend on grassroots cricket in order to strengthen the domestic set-up.
“We understand that 71% of what we spend our money on basically relates to elite and high performance cricket. Another 17% relates to what we call running the game. Just 12% goes to grassroots cricket. We need to find ways to increase that. It’s not enough,” Sutherland was quoted as saying by the Guardian.
Following the impasse over the pay dispute, Cricket Australia is further trying hard to make a deal with players, as the long-standing dispute is creeping into the month of June which could also witness further disturbances if requirements are not supposed to meet by the board itself within the time period.
“In some quarters, we’re being perceived as being hard or unfair on the players in this situation,” Sutherland stated.
The reports suggested Australian women’s team members are expected to face-off with the board of directors followed by Chairman David Peever and chief executive James Sutherland, as the deadline is nearing very close.
Earlier, this month, Sutherland has earlier threatened players for being left unemployed if they won’t reach to the agreement by or before June 30, a date which marks the end of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).
“But it’s important to note that we have a player payment pool in this current year of $79m, and our proposal for next year is for a player payment pool of $91m. That’s a 15% increase. There aren’t many people in Australia getting an increase like that, or have an offer like that on the table,” Sutherland maintained.
The reports revealed Sutherland has been at the helm to put an end to the fixed finance model which has been taking place over the past two decades based on the percentage, as CA is ready to impress an association.
As the relations become sour between CA and the ACA over the years, the initial talks have failed between both parties and it is being expected the invitation might see both parties building on to play a significant role to meet the requirements of the players.
“We’ve identified that through a lot of reviews we’ve done leading into this new strategic planning cycle,” Sutherland Concluded.
ACA is looking forward to retaining the revenue model percentage, as CA are mulling to break it down which has further seen players venting their anger over microblogging site Twitter.