Pay dispute takes a new turn, CA to offer unpaid contracts to 5 players

The never ending pay dispute between Cricket Australia and the Australian cricketers has taken a new turn. With just 3 days left for the current contracts of the players to expire, CA has offered Glenn Maxwell, Usman Khawaja, Ashton Agar, Jackson Bird and Travis Head unpaid contracts for the tour with the ‘A’ Team to South Africa.

All of these 5 cricketers are centrally contracted players by the CA. Australia ‘A’ is set to tour South Africa in the first week of July and the five centrally contracted players in the 14-man squad can tour for free in order to stake a claim for a potential Test spot. The CA has proposed an all expenses paid trip to these cricketers, who otherwise would have boycotted to stand in unison with their international teammates.

Players can still train at sports facilities

The Fairfax media reports that the contracted players won’t be locked out even if a new deal is not struck by Friday. They could still train at the facilities and use the medical facilities. The state cricketers playing in domestic cricket will continue to get paid as CA agreed to share a margin of the revenue with them which was initially forming a brick wall between both parties.

If the ongoing feud between the players and CA is not sorted, the international cricketers might start playing as freelancers, as pointed out by David Warner earlier. Former Australia cricketer Shane Watson, who has retired from international cricket but still plays in the various T20 leagues around the world, said that CA would attract a legal action if they try stopping cricketers from playing in rival leagues.

“If CA knock back an NOC [No Objection Certification] that’s a significant restraint of trade as well,” Watson, who has retired from international cricket and is an ACA executive member, said.

“In the end, I’ve got a Big Bash contract. Of course, I’ve got to get a NOC signed. For them to restrict my potential to be able to play and be employed somewhere else, there would be some pretty serious legal issues there.”

The heart of the issue is that CA wanted to scrap the revenue sharing model, in action since 1997 much to the dismay of the national cricketers. Since then, after umpteen meetings and discussions, there hasn’t been a way to get past this situation as the players are adamant and so is CA.