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Australian cricket’s pay dispute seems to be getting closer to a resolution but next month’s Test tour of Bangladesh must still be salvaged somehow.
After months of gloomy news about the pay negotiation between the country’s players and administrators, things brightened in the past few days, with reports Cricket Australia were softening their stance.
ESPNCricinfo assistant editor Daniel Brettig wrote on Tuesday that Cricket Australia had now “appeared to consent to a model of revenue sharing that has been adjusted to allow more of the game’s financial upside to flow into areas such as grassroots cricket, while still affording a significant proportion of money above projections to all players”.
It is the longstanding revenue sharing model which has been at the heart of the dispute, with CA seeking to jettison it and the players refusing to allow this.
The dispute has now dragged on for some nine months. News about the negotiations has been more positive ever since Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland finally sat down with Australian Cricketers Association boss Alistair Nicholson for several long meetings earlier this month.
For a large part of this pay war, communications between Sutherland and Nicholson had reportedly been limited mostly to phone calls and emails. I was optimistic that this removal of middle men in the dispute was the best possible chance for a resolution and, hopefully, that will now turn out to be true.
It had seemed increasingly unlikely that a deal would be made without major force being exerted by a third party. As each week passes by without an agreement, Cricket Australia’s commercial partners will be growing increasingly anxious and angry. The first Ashes Test is now less than four months away. The Australian team sponsors cannot start using that marquee event as a marketing tool while the dispute simmers.
The pressure from commercial partners will really ratchet up once we get within three months of the Ashes, assuming the pay war hasn’t yet ceased.
The heavy third party pressure I referred to earlier will come from the Board of Control for Cricket in India, should the pay war drag on long enough to threaten Australia’s planned six-match limited overs tour of India in October. Like every other cricketing board in the world, CA rely heavily on bilateral series with India to fill their coffers. It would surprise greatly if CA decide to essentially take on the BCCI by allowing the dispute to force the cancellation of October’s tour.
(AP Photo/Rui Vieira)
Unfortunately for Bangladesh, CA won’t make much money out of next month’s two-Test tour. That means the series against the Tigers is likely viewed as expendable by CA, while the players will be far less worried about losing that series than, for example, the prospect of the Ashes being cancelled.
Bangladesh could be a major casualty of this pay battle. The Tigers have improved vastly across all three formats in the past few years, particularly at home. Bangladesh have a 4-2 win-loss record across their past ten home Tests and drew 1-1 with England in their most recent series.
But the Tigers’ development is being hampered by not only a lack of Test series against heavyweights like Australia – who they haven’t played since 2006 – but also due to a paucity of matches full stop.
Bangladesh have played only eight Tests in the past two years. That is a minuscule amount of Test cricket in comparison to the number of matches played by England (26) and Australia (24) in the same period. Next month’s series against Australia would be one of the biggest moments in Bangladesh’s cricketing history.
It is not yet too late to save this series. As well as being fantastic for Bangladesh cricket, this tour would also allow Australia to build on the great progress they made in combating Asian conditions during their tour of India in March.
After years of horrifically limp displays in Tests in Asia, Australia finally showed some notable improvements in India. Having made significant ground in the pay dispute, CA and the ACA must now push on and get this deal done in time to keep the Bangladesh series alive.