Darren Sammy sneaks in with a comment on the ongoing pay dispute in Australia

Darren Sammy has made a cynical comment about the ongoing feud between Cricket Australia and Australian Cricketers’ Association. The former West Indies captain had become the face of revolution by the West Indian players against the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) when they were at loggerheads for their contracts. With a similar situation prevailing in Australia Sammy equated the current scenario to what happened between the WICB and the players a few years ago.

With the ACA and CA holding their own positions and not showing the willingness to bow down to the other’s demands the players have now come out in the open and stated that they will not back off from boycotting even the upcoming Ashes if a new contract is not agreed upon the terms in their favour.

Australian vice-captain David Warner who is leading the Sunrisers Hyderabad team in the Indian Premier League said, “If it gets to the extreme, they might not have a team for the Ashes,” he said. “I really hope they can come to an agreement… we don’t really want to see this panning out like that where we don’t have a team, we don’t have cricket in the Australian summer. It is up to CA to deal with the ACA. It’s obviously in their hands.”

On expected lines

If Warner is to be believed the players were expecting the situation to worsen and it hasn’t shocked them just that it has happened earlier than they expected.

“We thought something along the lines of this might happen … it’s not come as a shock, but more the fact it has come so early. We won’t buckle at all, we are standing together and very strong, and as you can see from all the people that have spoken so far, we are all on the same wavelength and are sticking together.”

Their demand is a substantial share in the revenue that the board makes and they are in no mood to back off from the stand. “We want a fair share and the revenue-sharing model is what we want, so we are going to stick together until we get that. We are not going to shy away; we are just going to stick together,” Warner said.

Sammy quoted an article which had the Australian opener talk about the issue and wrote- “Welcome to our world” as the Aussies now face a similar circumstance that the West Indian cricketers had to deal with a few years ago.