Australian Cricketer’s Association chief Alistair Nicholson has warned the Aussie players that the pay dispute might take more than 6 months for the matter to get resolved. Meanwhile, CA chief James Sutherland had suggested for arbitration in order to resolve the pay tussle between the Australian Board and the players.
CA have offered arbitration but the ACA wants mediation to solve the issue which puts the tour of Bangladesh and India in jeopardy. Besides this two series, the upcoming Ashes might also be in danger.
“Arbitration would bring about a significant delay in resolution as it would take many months, (perhaps 6 to 9) could be very costly (possibly costing hundreds of thousands of dollars which would be better spent in grassroots investment), and involve a multitude of policy and financial questions unique to elite international team sports which the arbitrator would need to consider, and the continued uncertainty through the summer on the revenue share model outcome and future employment of the players,” Nicholson wrote in his email to the 230-odd unemployed players on Saturday.
“Right now, we believe the better investment of our time and resources is continued negotiations with CA which will occur throughout the weekend. We will then have a position on arbitration by next week. We also believe mediation is a vastly superior process for cricket should the dispute not be resolved,” he further added.
Sutherland in his last press conference revealed that unless the pay dispute is settled all the future tours might be in danger. Not only the players will be without contracts, Cricket Australia will also incur huge financial losses.
A spokesperson of Cricket Australia said that there will be extensive discussions to come to a settlement at the earliest.
“At this stage, we aren’t going to speculate on details of arbitration, other than to reiterate players would be re-contracted at the commencement of arbitration and remain contracted until the final MOU can be signed,” the spokesperson was quoted by Cricbuzz.
“Our priority remains focused on the current intensive period of negotiation over the next few days in a final effort to reach sufficient agreement on the fundamental issues that would allow an HOA (heads of agreement) to be executed by early next week.”
ACA has given a proposal to offer 30 million dollars for the grassroots level cricket but Sutherland conceded that the offer presented to them will have their ability to invest financially and improve the infrastructure.
“The players have a really important role to play in the success of our sport but whether they should be decision-makers about where we invest our grassroots funding is a completely different matter,” Sutherland told News Corp Australia.
“What would the players know about that? What would the ACA know about that? Our decision-making authority being compromised by some form of veto is unthinkable. There are not a lot of people around the country who are getting significant pay increases right now. We have an extremely good offer on the table that allows well-paid cricketers to be even better paid,” he concluded.