Cricket Australia signs pay deal with Oz cricketers to avoid strike

Sydney, (ANI): Cricket Australia agreed to set aside more than a quarter of the revenue generated by the 2015 World Cup for the nation’s first-class players, avoiding the much anticipated stand-off between the sport’s governing body and the Australian Cricketer’s Association.

Cricket Australia and the Australian Cricketer’s Association signed the new memorandum of understanding well before the June 30 deadline.

The agreement has ended any chance of possible strike action by the Australian One-Day team during the present tour of England because failure to forge the new deal would have meant the players were off contract and unprotected after June 30.

Two sticking points throughout the negotiations were CA’s model for performance-based contracts that were linked to results, and which funds should be included in the Australian cricket revenue stream.

A source told the Sydney Morning Herald that the deadlock was broken after significant across-the-board “concessions”.

A breakthrough was achieved after CA decided to provide the ACA with 26 per cent of revenue from the World Cup to be jointly hosted by Australia and New Zealand in 2015, however, other points described as “quite generous” included: The performance model increasing from 24.5 per cent to 27 per cent; The state pool retainer growing from $6million to $7.8million; The average state cricketer’s contract increasing from $55,000 to $65,000.

CA will use the announcement of the agreement, expected this week, to confirm it had reduced the number of its contracted players from 25 to 18.