Ashley Mallett says Australian cricket is locked in a pay dispute because the players are greedy

CRICKETERS aren’t being paid a pittance anymore, and the pay stand-off is all about greed, writes Ashley Mallett

• CA, players maintain stand-off

THERE is only one word for the Australian Cricketers’ Association refusing to agree to Cricket Australia’s new pay deal for players. Greed.

CA’s chief executive James Sutherland’s threat to withdraw the offer of a new contract to all players who do not fall into line with their pay deal before the current MOU expires on June 30, was akin to declaring war on the ACA.

The ACA’s refusal to accept the new pay deal for 2017-18 smacks of greed on behalf of the players it represents. And CA’s attitude takes us back to the days when the board ruled the roost like the lord of the manor and our top players were “serfs.”

Today our leading players earn in excess of $1 million a season. Those who watch, listen and read big cricket will be appalled by the ACA’s attitude. Our players wallow in a truckload of cash every summer. This is no Oliver Twist asking Mr Bumble for more gruel.

If this is not greed, what is it?

Sir Donald Bradman lobbied administrators to change its name from The Australian Cricket Board for International Control to the Australian Cricket Board in the early 1970s, presumably because he thought the word “control,” belonged to another age.

During the Ashes series of 1974-75 when Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson were bouncing the Poms into submission, delighting bumper crowds everywhere we played, the players were sick and tired of playing for a pittance - $200 a Test match.

Jeff Thomson and Dennis Lillee thrilled thousands with their Test heroics while being woefully underpaid by today’s standards.

There was a veiled threat to go on strike during a Test match. In a pre-emptive strike, ACB secretary Alan Barnes - clearly a Bradman disciple - was quoted in The Australian as saying: “There are 500,000 cricketers who would love to play for nothing.”

We were playing England when a fuming Ian Chappell walked onto Adelaide Oval to toss. When Chappelli got back to the dressing-room he saw Ian Redpath had grabbed Barnes by the shirt and tie and had him pinned against the wall, saying, “You bloody idiot - of course 500,000 people would play for nothing, but how bloody good would they be?”.

Bradman was the stumbling block. Then when Kerry Packer came along with World Series Cricket and most of the top players took up his offer of a better pay deal, Bradman said the players had “stabbed us in the back.”

In the summer of 1967-68, when Shield players were paid a total of $30 (less $7.50 tax) we had Queensland on the ropes in Adelaide. Late on the third day they were nine down for not many, chasing 360, when I tossed one up to a tailender and he hit it high to a man in the outer - only for Neil Hawke to yell out, “drop it, drop it!”. If we won in three days, we lost a day’s pay.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved playing big cricket in my era. It was also nice to get paid during WSC and I am all for our top men getting paid handsomely, but not to the extent that handsome becomes greed. I

recall seeing a little quote “Play up, play up and play the game” on a wall which encircles Lord’s Cricket Ground.

Today the players are saying, “Pay up! Pay up! Then we’ll play the game.”

Originally published as Ashley Mallett says Australian cricket is locked in a pay dispute because the players are greedy