Australia A team trains for the South Africa tour despite it being virtually cancelled

Since Cricket Australia (CA) and Australian Cricketers Association (ACA) did not come to a resolution to the ongoing pay dispute, Australia A’s tour to South Africa is virtually cancelled, as the players are left without contracts and are unemployed. However, they are still hoping that the board will sign a new memorandum of understanding before the tour, which is why they turned up for training for the tour on Tuesday despite the threat to boycott the trip.

Due to no resolution in the dispute, as many as 230 Australian cricketers are currently unemployed. The ACA executive Alistair Nicholson said something needs to be finalised as soon as possible for the South Africa tour to get underway. Despite the virtual cancellation, the players have been abiding by their training schedule as on Tuesday. Because of the same dispute, upcoming Australia tours to Bangladesh and India as well as home series Ashes are all at stake.

“As a coach, I’ll help the players prepare as well as we can,” Australia A coach Jason Gillespie told reporters during the training.”We have to have the attitude as if we are going to be travelling,” he added.

Greg Chappell, Cricket Australia‘s national talent manager told reporters that he is also optimistic about a mutual agreement being made soon. “I’m expecting that we will see a positive resolution in the not too distant future and we will get back to focusing on the cricket,” he said.

CSA looking for alternatives already

Meanwhile, Cricket South Africa is thinking of new alternatives to the possible absence of the Australian players for the tour to South Africa.

“There is nothing at all that we can do about it. We’ll have to deal with whatever happens,” Haroon Lorgat, the Cricket South Africa chief executive told Fairfax Media in London. “We are working on plans, it is no big issue for us to make alternative arrangements. We respect what Cricket Australia is working through with the players and we will have to live with the absence of Australia A if it comes to that,” he said.