David Warner fears Ashes may not be played

David Warner, the Australian vice-captain has said that the players are prepared to go without playing the Ashes series to maintain the fixed revenue-percentage model dispute between Australian Cricketer’s Association and Cricket Australia. He further made it clear that if players are pushed out of their contracts then will turn to domestic Twenty20 tournaments.

CA chief executive James Sutherland had threatened that the players will have no games to play if the ACA fails to accept the board’s current pay offer, but all players united in rejecting attempts to break up the current MOU.

Warner also noted that if CA maintains its stance, cricket’s marketplace has international and domestic players plenty of opportunities to offer in T20 matches.

“If it gets to the extreme, they might not have a team for the Ashes. 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,” said David Warner.

Adamant on fair share

Warner was also adamant in his stance, and said that they want a fair share of the revenue and will stick to what they want until they get it. They will not back-off.

“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.”

In case the tussle is not settled, the two T20 platforms for the Australian cricketers can be English T20 Blast and the Caribbean Premier League. Without contracts, they will have to find some or the other way to play cricket the freelance way and continue to do what they love.

We need to find some cricket elsewhere

The Aussie opener feels that the upcoming CPLT20 (Caribbean Premier League) and England’s T20 Blast tournaments as the most probable destinations for Aussie international players in the short-term if they are out of contract on July 1.

“For us as cricketers, if we don’t have contracts we are going to have to find some cricket to play somewhere else because that’s what we love doing and we’re obviously going to look to maybe do something in the meantime otherwise we don’t get paid,” Warner said to The Age.

“A few boys might go over to play the Caribbean Premier League and I think there could be some of the England Twenty20s on as well. We want to keep participating for our country as much as we can, but if we don’t have a job we have to go and find some cricket elsewhere,” concluded Warner.