Cricket pay war: O’Keeffe weighs in on PR disaster

A CRICKETING great has taken a swipe at David Warner as Australia’s ugly pay dispute enters another week of uncertainty.

The pay war has been a PR disaster.

CRICKET’S ugly pay war has left everyone with a bitter taste in their mouth after weeks of awkward exchanges between players and administration.

In short, it’s a stalemate.

Neither side wants to give in to the other’s demands as talks between Cricket Australia and the Australian Cricketers’ Association continue.

The dispute, which has seen professional players around the country unemployed, has drawn in countless Aussie legends to speak up for — and against — the demands to change the players’ share of revenue.

Former Aussie leg-spinner Kerry O’Keeffe has been particularly vocal amid the mess, providing fans with running commentary as each bombshell drops.

“A resolution is imminent I believe,” he said on Triple M’s Dead Set Legends. “I think both sides will give a little and we’ll have a resolution within two or three weeks.”

But the damage to players’ reputations as representatives looks set to be tarnished regardless of the result.

O’Keeffe previously stated the players were at serious risk of losing the respect of fans as they bickered over pay.

The pay war has been an unmitigated disaster.

“They risk failing the pub test. Now the public’s starting to find out Steve Smith’s on $2 million, Mitchell Starc’s on $1.8 million, that the average (Sheffield) Shield player gets $240,000,” he said on FOX Sport’s The Back Page last month.

The 67-year-old took a swipe at both sides’ handling of the situation, particularly Test and ODI opener David Warner.

“Both sides have played it poorly, PR-wise. The players haven’t (expressed) enough how passionate they are and much they love and value wearing the (Australian) cap,” he said on Triple M radio.

“It’s basically ‘us against them, we’re on strike for better money’. They should have played (up) the passion in the cap, which is there.

“People like David Warner saying ‘I’ll go off and play Twenty20 rather than the Ashes’, it’s poor because he wants to play Ashes desperately. But they wanted to make a stance. As it is I think they’ll accept the AFL model, which is 21-22 per cent of profit rather than revenue.

“That’s a good offer. I’ll accept that.”

Former Aussie wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist is optimistic the pay dispute will come to an end by next week.

“James Sutherland, the CEO of Cricket Australia is finally at the table and I believe things are progressing, and I hope and I believe within a week we’ll have something to celebrate,” he told FOX Sports’ The Back Page last night.

But former Test batsman Ed Cowan wasn’t so sure.

“I think Gilly’s slightly premature on that. I can’t see an even in-principle agreement getting done in the next week,” Cowan told FOX Sports last night.

“The good news is that both parties are in the room and they’re talking and things are moving forward. I think Gilly’s a bit bullish. I think we’ll see some more movement, and it might be two weeks let’s say.

“Having said that, Gilly usually gets some pretty good mail so let’s hope so.”

Adam Gilchrist can see the pay war ending soon.

‘THE DAMAGE HAS ALREADY BEEN DONE’

The scars from the pay war between players and Cricket Australia will take a long time to heal, Test great Mitchell Johnson says.

As talks between CA and the Australian Cricketers’ Association continued on Wednesday, Johnson said the damage had already been done.

“Once it’s all dealt with, I think the player-CA relationship is going to be a struggle,” Johnson told AAP Wednesday.

“I think it’s going to be very ordinary.

“Even if it gets sorted, the damage has already been done.

“There has been big personal insults thrown around about the players being greedy and those kinds of things, which is not the case, and much more.

“The damage has been done, so the relationship is going to have to build again.”

CA and the players’ union resumed negotiations on Wednesday to try to break the impasse in the pay dispute.

Mitchell Johnson is fed up.

The previous Memorandum of Understanding covering player wages expired on July 1, effectively leaving about 230 Australian cricketers unemployed. The ACA and players subsequently pulled out of a scheduled Australia A tour of South Africa, steadfast in wanting to retain the revenue-sharing model of the past 20 years, while CA wanted to move to a fixed-revenue system. Johnson feared CA and its chairman David Peever, a former Rio Tinto managing director, were trying to break the players’ union.

“The players have fought so hard, the ACA, for the last 19 years, and got this module that we have in a really good place, and other things as well,” the veteran of 73 Tests said.

“From the CA point of view, I know David Peever, ex-Rio Tinto ... no unions. So that is the thing that concerns me a lot.

“If we lose this battle as players, does then the ACA start getting their legs chopped from underneath them and the players lose the ACA?

“That is the scary thing from my point of view.

“Cricket will still go on, but I don’t know what sort of input the players will have in the future.”

— with AAP