Unemployment looms for Australia’s cricketers: Union

Melbourne (Reuters): More than 200 of Australia’s top cricketers face unemployment within days, with a bitter pay dispute “extremely” unlikely to be resolved by a deadline on Friday, players’ union boss Greg Dyer has said.

Australia’s top cricketers face being locked out unless a new memorandum of understanding (MoU) is struck between Cricket Australia and the Australian Cricketers’ Association (ACA), with the current agreement set to expire on June 30.

ACA president Dyer said players and Cricket Australia remained “a long way apart” on basic issues and the union was preparing its members for unemployment.

“It is extremely likely that as of July 1 we’ll be jumping over the cliff together,” Dyer told local media on Tuesday. “The fundamentals of the deal are nowhere near to being resolved. Over 200 of Australia’s most senior cricketers are unemployed as of the 1st of July. We will be assisting in whatever way we possibly can in that but they’re unemployed.”

At the heart of the dispute is a long-standing agreement that gives the players a fixed percentage of the revenue of the game, a deal which CA says prevents them from sufficiently investing in the grassroots. CA offered a revised deal on Friday but the union quickly rejected it.

Unless the impasse ends, the upcoming Australia A tour of South Africa, a two-test series in Bangladesh and a limited-overs tour of India are under threat, with the Ashes also looming at the end of the year.

CA has declined to comment on the negotiations but said in announcing its revised offer last week that it was “100% committed” to resolving the MoU by the deadline.