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Cricket Australia (CA) chief executive James Sutherland says an impasse with the players’ union has been overcome and a final agreement on a new pay deal is imminent.
Australian captain Michael Clarke’s one-day side departed for a tour of England and Ireland this week, as fears of strike action eased significantly following a breakthrough in talks between CA and the Australian Cricketers’ Association (ACA).
The deadline for a new deal is June 30 and Sutherland is confident an agreement will be reached.
Sutherland denied CA had a problem at any stage with the ACA.
“We work through issues from day to day and this is obviously a major one,” Sutherland told reporters on Friday.
“It’s challenging and it’s complex and it’s important, and I don’t think either party expected to be able to walk through this easily.
“Inevitably, the willingness on both sides was there to make sure something was done by the end.
“We just were not able to work through the impasse and, fortunately, we’ve found a way through that in the last couple of days.
“We’re now in a very confident position of having an agreement.”
CA chairman Wally Edwards was also in a buoyant mood.
“The board today has considered a lot of the issues and there’s just details now to be resolved,” he said.
Sutherland also spoke about scheduling issues CA is facing this summer.
The Champions League Twenty20 — featuring Perth Scorchers and Sydney Sixers — is to be staged in India a month later than normal in October because of the T20 World Cup in Sri Lanka in September.
CA is considering scheduling a handful of Sheffield Shield games in September in an early start to the 2012-13 season, possibly in the warmer northern cities of Cairns and Darwin.
The weather will also be an issue for the national team if Australia’s limited-overs series against Pakistan is hosted by the United Arab Emirates in August.
The series won’t be played in Pakistan for security reasons and Sri Lanka has pulled out as host because of commitments with its domestic T20 competition.
“If the UAE was a preferred venue then, yes, it’s a time of year when it is very hot and humid,” Sutherland said.
“We would expect both countries would have concerns about that and be doing everything they can to minimise that effect.”
Pakistan Cricket Board’s director of international operations Intikhab Alam says the plan for the tour is to schedule three ODIs and three T20 Internationals.
He said he had given the Pakistan board his assessment of venues in UAE and Malaysia and an announcement was expected next week.
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