All Not-so Rosy in Big Bash Country?

Now arguable popularity rich, thanks to the Big Bash, Australia needs big cash to prop-up the lower tiers of the game but the star players want a bigger share of the riches. 


Their also appears to be some dispute about the true impact of Big Bash with regards to playing the game at grassroots! 

Or is all this a tactic in negotiations with top players who are looking to milk out more of the wealth for themselves? 

With a strike threatened for the Ashes, the Australian Government threaten to intervene.

Government could mediate CA-ACA dispute if Ashes threatened.

Daniel Brettig.

Cricinfo.

Sunday, 28 May 2017.

PTG 2150-10910.

Australia's sport minister, Greg Hunt, has revealed the Federal Government would be prepared to step in and provide "good officers" for mediation between Cricket Australia (CA) and the Australian Cricketers' Association (ACA) should the current pay dispute continue to spiral.

Following the refusal of CA's chairman David Peever to grant the ACA's request for independent mediation (PTG 2149-10905, 28 May 2017), and further attempts by the team performance manager Pat Howard to deal directly with the players, Hunt said that the government was hesitant about being too interventionist about contract disputes in professional sport. However, he indicated there was scope to act as a mediator if the dispute looked likely to threaten the home Ashes series later this year.

"If it got to a last-minute situation, I suspect that we would offer to provide good officers brokering between the parties, but there's six months between now and the Ashes”, Hunt told ABC’s ‘Insiders’ program on Sunday. "It would be unthinkable that in the end we wouldn't have a full team. The players love playing for Australia, [CA] knows this is not just fundamental to sport, it is part of our national identity. I'm very confident they will reach an agreement".

Among other areas of expansion, CA has recently grown its government relations division drastically, from a single staffer based in Melbourne to one in each state, all reporting in to CA's head office. The ACA, too, have enlisted the help of political experience in the pay dispute, retaining the services of the former Labor government minister and longtime union leader Greg Combet (PTG 2146-10894, 26 May 2017).

Asked whether he was comfortable with Combet's involvement, Hunt spoke warmly of his former political opponent. "I'm completely relaxed about it”, Hunt said. "I actually know Greg Combet well, whilst we've disagreed on different things in the past, I think he's fundamentally a person of good sense and integrity”.

In assessing how he thought the dispute would play out, Hunt pointed out that CA was "very well-resourced" and the players "very highly paid". The board has been citing the need to better fund grassroots facilities around the country as a reason for breaking up the players' fixed revenue percentage model that has existed as the basis for pay agreements for the past 20 years (PTG 2149-10904, 28 May 2017).  "This is a pay dispute between a very well-resourced organisation and very highly paid players”, Hunt said. "They'll work it out”.

‘Grassroots' game urgently needs $A30 million: CA chief executive.

PTG Editor.

ABC-TV interview.

Thursday, 25 May 2017.

PTG 2146-10893.

Grassroots cricket needs up to $A30 million (£UK17.3 m) immediately and much more in the long run if the game is not to wither in Australia, according to Cricket Australia (CA) chief executive James Sutherland (PTG 1974-9946, 12 November 2016).  Speaking on the ABC Television on Thursday in the light of the on-going pay dispute with players, Sutherland said his organisation wanted to modify its revenue-sharing agreement and redirect monies, in part because an audit had shown cricket was lagging in facilities and player numbers, especially those of girls.

Sutherland said in regard to the revenue-sharing agreement, which has led to the impasse with the players’ union: "We don't want to entirely abandon it, but we do want to modernise it ... in the interests of the whole game”. "We believe the model has served a purpose where previously the players were not well paid. They are well paid now. We're pleased about that ... but we have this responsibility to grow the game in the grassroots”.  

The chief executive pointed to players' pay increasing overall under CA's proposed arrangement from $A79-91 million  (£45.6-52.4 m).  "We have a very strong and generous offer on the table and we haven't sat down to talk about it”, he said. "It's over two months now since we put that offer on the table and I don't see why we haven't had one single conversation about it. We're increasingly concerned that the players association isn't acting in the players’ interests”.

Sutherland said that as “a coach of an Under-13 cricket team I know and understand the challenges that cricket clubs face.  We’ve identified that we need $A20-30 million (£11.5-17.3 m) a year to really make a difference. On the facilities side, we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars”. 

While he did not detail precisely where such monies would go, CA’s first national audit of Australian cricket infrastructure, a process that apparently assessed around 6,000 cricket facilities, was reported last month to have suggested "perhaps 75 per cent of them do not yet have female-appropriate amenities”.  Claims were made then that up to $A76 million (£44 m) could be reallocated to "grassroots” issues.  The national body was also said to be eyeing expanding its in-house media unit and game development staff numbers (PTG 2100-10644, 10 April 2017).

Sutherland’s apparent claim that player numbers are lagging contradicts data collated via CA's ‘Australian Cricket Census’ (ACC) over the last half-decade, although not all of the information that has been presented under the ACC banner has been consistent from year-to-year (PTG 1906-9559, 24 August 2016).  

Last year’s figures, which covered the 2015-16 austral summer, led to CA saying in August that “a record” 1.31 million Australians ‘participated' in the game that season, an 8.5 per cent jump on the number claimed for the previous year.  A quarter of those playing were said to be females, the growth from the year before being reported by CA as 9 percent.  Such numbers, said CA at the time, showed cricket was Australia's "number one participation sport”, however, a few months later an Australian government survey refuted that claim, putting cricket at around six on the national playing table (PTG 2000-10101, 9 December 2016).

Sutherland also during the ABC interview that he rejected the characterisation of CA chairman David Peever, formerly head of Rio Tinto, as a "union buster” (PTG 2143-10867, 23 May 2017) .  "When it comes to cricket, he's first and foremost a club cricketer”, Sutherland said.  Peever, 60, played Premier League cricket in Queensland in his younger years (PTG 1346-6505, 5 May 2014).