Cricket Australia (CA) is bound to have testing times in the weeks to follow, as the talks with the Australia Cricket Association (ACA) have yielded no results. With the contracts of the cricketers expiring soon, CA had proposed a new fixed pay structure for the individuals for the future. This wasn’t too well received by the players, who demanded a share among the profits rather than a fixed pay.
Vice-captain of the side, David Warner even hinted that the players wouldn’t back down from becoming freelance T20 players if the need arose. The prospects of having a weakened Australia side for the home Ashes later this year seem eminent now.
Former all-rounder Shane Watson in a recent interaction opened up about the matter and mentioned that CA was headed for a further crisis if the talks didn’t yield fruitful results soon. Watson said that CA’s chief executive, James Sutherland’s absence from the entire episode was a little shocking.
“It’s moved in a very different way compared to what it was, with the CEO not being involved in the negotiations,” Watson said. “James is a bit of an expert in negotiations with his previous experiences and this time he’s not even involved in this one, which just bewilders me how that happens, someone who knows the ins and outs of how things work in MoU negotiations have not actually been involved. Hopefully, that’ll happen over the next few days and we might be able to come closer to a resolution.”
“Nothing’s irreparable, time heals most wounds, but it’s incredibly disappointing from a cricketer’s point of view, knowing CA’s really changed its dynamic over the last five years,” Watson said. “It’s become very corporatised, not just a governing body of the game of cricket, with all the board members and how it’s actually changed. Everyone believed at that moment in time it was a great thing for the game of cricket to bring the corporate side of the business into cricket,” the all-rounder further added.
Watson also added that the players have many options regarding their careers, as several T20 based avenues have opened up.
“At the end, on July 1 if all the cricketers are unemployed then there’s opportunities to play in different parts of the world which I’m fortunate enough to be involved with at this point in time in my career, whether it’s the Caribbean League, the Bangladesh League, the South African league that’s coming up as well. So there’s plenty of opportunities, but hopefully, it should not get to that. It should never have got to this stage where we are now with three days to go and it seems like we’re poles apart in the negotiations.”
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