ACA confirms Australia A's boycott of South Africa tour

Cricket Australia suggested a change in the Memorandum of Understanding(MOU) between themselves and ACA according to which the Australian cricketers would no more receive a fixed amount of payment from the organisation's revenue (25 percent) but would rather be offered a share of the profit. The ACA denied the suggested changes and instead offered to reduce the percentage of share offered to the players to 22.5 percent from the original 25 but the CA firmly rejected the offer and since then the pay dispute has continued to grab headlines all over the world with the recent setback being Australia A's tour of South Africa being cancelled.

The website also reported that both the two committees had met in recent days to discuss negotiations on the ongoing issue, unlike their previous stances that led to the expiration of the previous MoU on June 30th.

Cricket Austraila expressed disappointment on the cancellation of the month-long tour while confirming the ongoing negotiations. The Australian cricket board suggested that $250,000 that would have been spent on the tour would now be used to fund community facilities. CA also said that the players who hold multi-year contracts with state associations and KFC Big Bash League franchises will be paid in accordance with their contracts. 

"Cricket Australia is disappointed that players have today confirmed that they are unwilling to take part in the Australia A tour of South Africa," the CA statement said.

However, the upcoming series too could be jeopardised by the bitter pay dispute and former Australian skipper Allan Border expressed his concerns and fear on the looming clouds of uncertainty over the future of cricket in Australia.

“It seems ridiculous that it’s got to this. (Australia A tours) can be rescheduled, but tours of India and Ashes can’t — and that’s looming,” Border told Fox Sports.

“As an outsider, you’ve got to say ‘does that mean touring India is going to be a problem?’.

“If that happens, the Indians are going to have some say about what’s going on — it’s costing us money. And then the Ashes. I can’t imagine that not going ahead because of a player boycott. They’ve just got to get in a room and do it now.”

“If they need a mediator… whatever it takes to get both parties together and talking,” he said when asked if he’d take on that role.

“At the moment it just seems as though they’re not talking to each other They’ve got total separate thoughts on the thing and just won’t negotiate. You can’t just let these things drift because there’ll be serious ramifications down the line.”

“That’s hard to come back from. You lose your supporter base,” Border said.

“There’s a lot of people out there that love the game but as soon as you start boycotting Ashes series… that is a serious situation. Can the game survive something like that? You just don’t know. It might survive in Twenty20 scenarios but the traditional game, how do you come back from that?”