Australian Cricketers’ Association (ACA) chief executive Alistair Nicholson has warned that the upcoming Ashes is under severe threat even if there is a resolution to the pay dispute which has been circling Australian cricket in the recent past.
The June 30 deadline has passed already 3 weeks ago and with 230 cricketers unemployed the rift between ACA and Cricket Australia (CA) continues. A meeting through has been scheduled between Nicholson and James Sutherland on Sunday. In his email, Nicholson conceded that even if there was a resolution there can’t be a certainty on the future tours.
“If there is agreement, the next step would be the more intensive MOU and contract drafting period,” he wrote. “Given past experience and the massive detail involved, this would take some time and still may not be completed with time enough to meet the needs of fans, sponsors and broadcasters invested in the upcoming tours and the summer of cricket.I add that it is hard to conceive of any further flexibility the players could possibly offer in these negotiations,” his email read.
The ACA has promised to continue the fight in an attempt to retain the revenue sharing model which the CA is planning to overhaul and provide more opportunities to the grassroots level. As per reports from Cricbuzz, the ACA feels that the revenue sharing model would remain under a new principle agreement in a compromise between the parties to end their passage which doesn’t seem to have a way out.
“Contrary to this progress and ACA’s attempts to resolve the dispute, on Thursday night the ACA received draft legal wording removing any reference to ‘revenue share’ in a proposed new Article 5 of the next MOU,” Nicholson wrote. “This was unexpected. It has set back negotiations and thwarted the prospects of an agreement. The ACA will seek clarification on this as a matter of priority, as it seems to ignore a number of our proposed solutions in the terms sheet.”
Nicholson further added that the players had offered to donate (AUD) $30 million to grassroots level cricket.
“We, therefore, offered a modernised model including the making of substantial concessions by the players in good faith. Namely, that players would accept a formal mechanism for redistributing amounts of revenue from the players to grassroots cricket via a new Players Grassroots Investment Fund (PGIF).”
“Dependent on the achievement of revenue forecasts, we have proposed that this would be approximately $30 million injection from all male, female, international and domestic players,” he added. “It is a show of the players’ respect for growing the game and the next generation of players.”