Cricket fans treated like mugs

The world watches and waits while North Korea’s psychotic-in-chief, Kim Jong-un, draws radiations symbols on a map of the Pacific. The abiding image we have is of Jong-un, a genuine Bond villain from central casting, laughing maniacally with a fluffy cat sitting on his lap. But of course Jong-un wouldn’t be stroking it. He’d be eating it.

That is not the biggest of our problems.

Nor should we be overly concerned about the death of pluralism in this country as the Liberal Party dithers over whether to sell the office furniture on eBay and walk away with some dignity intact or muddles on for a couple more years.

There is a bigger crisis facing the nation at the moment and that is the threat of no cricket this summer, no Ashes series at least or if there is one it will not be played at a serious competitive level.

Sure, if the selectors called me up, I guess I could put the pads on and stride purposefully across the picket line before striding purposefully to the crease, face up to Anderson, Broad and Co. and take the shine off the new ball. With my head.

But no one is going to pay good money to watch that. All right, maybe one or two of you might obtain some obscene pleasure from watching a man clearly out of his depth being repeatedly and heavily concussed. It’s what keeps the turnstiles spinning in boxing after all.

Cricket Australia and the players, represented by Australian Cricketers’ Association have been at loggerheads for months. The Australia A tour of South Africa was abandoned yesterday. A tour of Bangladesh is the next cab off the rank and if no agreement can be reached, the Ashes series, beginning in November will be the next to have a red line ruled through it.

The big problem is, like many seemingly intractable industrial disputes, both sides hold perfectly valid positions.

For those of us who played cricket at some reasonable level, player payments where they were offered, were uncomplicated. A dollar a run, five dollars a catch and twenty bucks a wicket. Something of that order.

At the elite level it’s a bit more abstruse. The Memorandum of Understanding first established in 1997 between Cricket Australia and the Australian Cricketers’ Association now runs to a Tolkenian 600 pages. I strongly suspect no one has read it from go to woah.

Broadly speaking the players’ position is the revenue arrangements that have been in place must remain in place. Cricket Australia wants to do away with revenue sharing and place cricketers on individual contracts.

The MOU has now expired, leaving players without any contractual arrangement. As it stood, players earned 24.5 cents in every dollar of Cricket Australia revenue with further spoils to be enjoyed where a surplus exists between projected and actual revenues over the period of the MOU.

The AFL has agreed to provide the players in its competition with earnings based on a 28 per cent share of revenue. Despite this, Cricket Australia believes its revenue sharing arrangement diminishes its ability to help fund and support the game at grassroots level as well as continuing to support the development of women’s cricket at all levels.

A report in The Australian yesterday, indicated the players had rejected an overture from Cricket Australia to carry over a $58.5 million dollar surplus between projected and actual revenues of which $30 million would go to the game’s biggest names, some of whom are now happily ensconced in retirement.

This is a negotiating tactic and a pretty rough one at that — a bald-faced attempt to make players look greedy and self-serving. What Cricket Australia mentioned only in passing is the offer would oblige it to renege on an agreement it signed off on five years ago.

The players’ greatest concerns are that those who come after them will be dudded and obliged to negotiate their salaries on a one-by-one basis.

This dispute has its genesis during the seven Test series against England in Australia in 1970-71 when Ian Chappell looked into the stands at the 60,000 strong crowd at the G and wondered why he, as captain, was making a measly $300 a game.

Chappelli’s moment of quiet reflection ultimately led to the establishment of a rogue competition, World Series Cricket. Now elite players have a wealth of competitions not within CA’s sphere of management to choose from. Those lucky and/or talented enough to have their teeth checked and forearms probed before going up on the block at the Indian Premier League can earn millions in little more than a month or for those slightly less fortunate, any one of a number of T-20 competitions in the West Indies, England, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates offer participants spectacular incomes.

This is a grim reminder the current group of players at the elite level can walk away.

The players are the game. It’s not much of a sport without them. If there’s any doubt about that ask yourself if you would like to see Cricket Australia CEO, James Sutherland with new nut in hand come off the long run this summer? Maybe the nine member Cricket Australia board could become flanneled fools, too. Mark Taylor, 52, would field at slip while another board member, Michael Kasprowicz, 45, could hurl a few passable deliveries down back of a length while the other seven members, very talented in their chosen business fields, would not exactly capture the nation’s imagination.

While Cricket Australia worries about the game’s development at park and club levels, they seem to have forgotten the real grassroots of the game are the fans who contribute directly to CA revenues by walking through the turnstiles and indirectly by switching on their TVs to the cricket.

And the fans are being treated like mugs while the two parties haggle over slices of a pie that is estimated to be worth about half a billion dollars over the next five years.

Get it fixed and get it fixed now.

This article was originally published at The Australian 7 July 2017