Ashes saved as peace deal is brokered in Australian cricket pay dispute

The bitter pay dispute that has played out so acrimoniously in public this year and threatened to derail the Australian summer of cricket, including the Ashes series, has ended with a peace deal between Cricket Australia and the players’ union finally brokered.

CA and the Australian Cricketers’ Association reached agreement on Thursday, having been bunkered down in intensive negotiations since Sunday, to ensure the showpiece event against England will take place as planned, as well as preceding men’s tours to Bangladesh and India.

“Today’s agreement is a result of a sensible compromise between the two parties,” CA chief executive James Sutherland said at a press conference at the MCG. “Change is never easy but something that is necessary.

“This process hasn’t been easy and history will judge if it was all worth it in the end. Neither side has got all it wanted in these negotiations. We’ve reached a good compromise, one that we can both live with.”

When asked about how close the Ashes were to being scrapped, Sutherland said: “You can’t predict the future but I think both parties have a lot more in common than we don’t. We all care deeply about the game.”

The ACA chief executive, Alastair Nicholson, said in response to the same question that “the resolve was very strong within the player group”.

The deal brings to an end a bitter standoff and months of bickering over how money in the game is distributed. Under the terms of the new, “modernised” deal, players will share in around $500m of revenue over the next five years – an increase of nearly $120m.

Female players, for the first time, will be part of what is a gender-equal model and their payments will increase from $7.5m to $55.2m. Up to $30m will flow directly to grassroots investment.

While a new memorandum of understanding is yet to be finalised – and will not be for a number of weeks – the two parties have hammered out heads of agreement, meaning the 230 players who were effectively made unemployed when the last MoU expired on 1 July will be able to play again.

The ACA will now take the offer to the players, with a recommendation to accept the terms. “CA looks forward to working with the ACA over the next couple of weeks to finalise the new MOU,” Sutherland said.

Meanwhile, the players will now be able to return their full focus to the tour to Bangladesh. Darren Lehmann’s squad will meet in Darwin next week for a training camp before heading to Bangladesh on 18 August.

“Relationships with the game have been tested and I know that has been a bit of a turn off for fans,” Sutherland said. “Both parties acknowledge and regret that. We are restoring certainty and beginning to repair relationships, especially with the fans. We want the focus to be back on the cricket.”

In the absence of a deal, Australia A’s recent tour to South Africa was cancelled 48 hours before the team was supposed to leave, and the tour of Bangladesh was next in the firing line with the departure date fast approaching.

Men’s team captain Steve Smith had said he and his players were willing to down tools and boycott the two-Test series in Bangladesh if an in-principle agreement was not reached. Australia also have a five-match ODI series and one-off Twenty20 game in India slated for October.

With the dispute dragging on, there were also concerns the men’s and women’s Ashes series, which start in Brisbane for the women on 22 November and for the men a day later, would be affected.

Last week, CA chief executive James Sutherland suggested that if a deal could not be struck early this week, independent arbitration was the only solution left, although the ACA had not officially agreed to that.

The two warring parties have since December last year butted heads on the key terms of a new MoU, most contentiously the issue revenue-sharing.

CA wanted to scrap the existing model that had been in place for 20 years – under which players got a fixed share of annual revenue – in favour of a new agreement that allowed greater flexibility for investment in grassroots cricket.

The ACA, meanwhile, dug in over its preference to keep the revenue-sharing model in place for fear the players would cease being partners in the game and instead become regular paid employees.

Peace has broken out in what many will see as a win for the players, but the lasting effects of such an acrimonious dispute, at which fans, sponsors and even government departments have expressed their frustration, remain to be seen.

With high-profile players such as Smith and David Warner speaking out on the matter, it may take some time to heal the deep wounds inflicted on both sides in the dispute.

The saga has also inevitably taken its toll on the confidence of players, sponsors and fans in CA and its chief executive, James Sutherland, who has been widely criticised for lack of involvement in talks until recently.

(THE GUARDIAN)