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What will happen if CA contract dispute drags past June 31?

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James Sutherland, CEO of Cricket Australia
TIME is running out for Cricket Australia and the Australian Cricketers’ Association to settle their messy pay dispute.

On Tuesday, ACA president Greg Dyer called on the board’s top brass to step in and take a seat at the bargaining table.

“James Sutherland has been strangely absent to date from these negotiations and we want him involved, we want him engaged,” Dyer told reporters.

“It’s beyond time that CA sent its most senior executive to the negotiating table and let’s get this sorted out, the two CEOs sitting down and having a sensible conversation about how this can be resolved.”

There remains a gaping chasm between the two parties on key issues – particularly the ACA’s desired revenue-sharing wage model – as we approach the June 31 expiry date for the current memorandum of understanding.

If that day comes and goes without a resolution, the bulk of Australia’s international and domestic cricketers will effectively be unemployed.

“I think it’s fair to say we still remain a long way apart,” Dyer continued.

“The fundamentals of the deal are nowhere near resolved.

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“We see the retention of the revenue share model as being fundamental from our perspective and we have not been able to engage sensibly.

“The players have been very flexible, they’ve said we can look at alternative ways of addressing that revenue share model, but we’ve not had any response in return.

“We’ve twice sought mediation and called for the intervention of the CEO, and we’ve not had any reasonable response to any of those requests.”

Dyer, who played six Test matches and 23 One Day Internationals for Australia, expressed disbelief at Sutherland’s refusal to take an active role at such a significant moment in his administration.

“It’s the most important deal that CA will do in five years and arguably longer,” he said.

“I don’t personally understand why the most senior person in the organisation shouldn’t be involved in setting those parameters on behalf of the organisation.

“I don’t understand why he wouldn’t be involved.

“James Sutherland is in fact overseas right now, so we have to wait for his return and then maybe we can make some progress.”

Watson blames ‘corporatised’ board culture

The ACA boss is not the only former Test player to voice concern over the CA’s approach to these tense negotiations.

Shane Watson has taken to social media on a number of occasions over the past month to show his support for Australia’s current national and domestic cricketers.

He was especially vocal last week when it emerged that authorities had bypassed the ACA and sent contract proposals directly to players.

Watson believes the “very corporatised” nature of modern cricket is a big factor in the communication breakdown between the players and the board.

“It’s moved in a very different way compared to what it was, with the CEO not being involved in the negotiations,” he said this week.

“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 has not actually been involved.

“Hopefully that’ll happen over the next few days and we might be able to come closer to a resolution.”

Watson is one of a growing number of veteran cricketers who ply their trade on the domestic Twenty20 circuit.

He pointed out, as others have done before him, that those competitions would provide plenty of opportunity for Australia’s star players should they fall out of contract.

Such a scenario could lead to further complications if the board then refused to issue No Objection Certificates – a requirement for playing in overseas tournaments.

But Watson is hoping it doesn’t come to that.

“It would be a disaster,” he said.

“In the end everyone wants the best players playing all the time for Australia, anytime a tour comes up and especially in the lead-up to an Ashes series as well.

“The dream of any Australian cricketer is to play in that series, so if the lead-up doesn’t go to plan because the players aren’t able to play high quality cricket in the lead-up to it, then we certainly don’t want to give the English an upper hand in an Ashes series.

“The players certainly don’t want that and I’m sure Cricket Australia don’t want that.

“But where things are at it’s not looking great.”

Why this is happening and where it will lead

Should this dispute drag into July and beyond, it could have a number of obvious repercussions for Australian cricket.

No contracted players means no international fixtures, no top-tier domestic cricket, perhaps even no T20 Big Bash League.

With a home Ashes series on the horizon, that would be an unmitigated disaster for all concerned.

Cricket Australia stands to lose millions in gate receipts, broadcast deals and sponsorship – vital revenue streams at the heart of the current standoff.

The Australian gambling industry will also take a massive hit if one of the world’s biggest cricket betting events is struck off the calendar.

Combine that with Network Ten’s financial struggles and the resulting concerns over the quality of coverage we can expect for the upcoming BBL tournament, and things are looking rather grim for Sutherland and company right now.

The nation’s female representatives are on provisional contracts for the ongoing 2017 Women’s Cricket World Cup.

But the ACA and several prominent male players have made it clear they would not even consider such an arrangement unless significant progress was made at the bargaining table.

So what is the problem preventing a swift, painless resolution that pleases both parties?

The new contract proposals sent out earlier this year featured a sharp decrease in the revenue sharing system that has been at the core of player salaries for many years now.

In an age when sports stars are earning a bigger piece of the pie as top-flight divisions become more and more profitable, the CA’s offer was essentially a pay cut and/or a wage freeze.

That swipe across the line was put into stark relief earlier this month when the Australian Football League and the AFL Players’ Association settled on a landmark agreement built on a strong move towards cricket’s existing MoU and the revenue share model.

Male cricketers on central contracts – that is, the lucky few at the very pinnacle of the sport – are among the best-paid athletes in Australia, and they want to keep it that way.

The nation’s elite players earned a base salary of $900,000 for the season ending March 2017, with endorsements and match fees for Tests ($14k), ODIs ($7k) and T20Is ($5k) boosting annual wages into the vicinity of $2 million and up for some.

That is not the case at state level, where players outside the international arena may take home as little as $60,000 per annum – even less in the women’s game.

By comparison, the number of million-dollar contracts in the AFL and the NRL is growing year on year.

The country’s star cricketers have said time and again that this issue affects all players, not just those in the upper echelons.

The sport is already suffering from a talent drain to other codes, so limiting the financial appeal of playing for Australia would do nothing to fix that problem.

There is also the not-so-small matter of domestic T20 leagues.

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If players feel they are not getting what they deserve from their national board, they could walk out on domestic and international cricket in favour of the big bucks on offer in India, England and the Caribbean.

Look at what has happened to cricket in the West Indies: the administrators and the players have been at war for decades, and now the region’s best talent is ditching international arena for the glitz and glamour of T20 (and for basketball and athletics).

That should be reason enough for Sutherland and CA to take the players’ demands seriously.

For weeks now there has been an expectation that everything will fall into place and we will all move on with our lives as though nothing ever happened.

One only has to glance at the recent history of pro sports in the United States to see how quickly and catastrophically these things can get out of hand.

Remember the National Basketball Association lockout in 2011, when the start of the season was delayed some four months over an unresolved collective bargaining agreement?

That was the fourth time that had happened in the NBA.

How about when the entire 2004-05 National Hockey League season was cancelled over labour action, or when most of the 2012-13 NHL campaign was called off as well?

This stuff happens even in the big leagues – so when David Warner says the players will not suit up for the 2017-18 Ashes if they do not have acceptable contracts, it would be most foolish to treat it as an idle threat.

For everybody’s sake, the CA must start playing ball, stop trying to dodge the ACA and find a solution.

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