BD tour plunged into uncertainty
Australia's scheduled tour of Bangladesh in August-September seems to have been plunged into serious uncertainty after the ongoing pay war between Cricket Australia (CA) and the Australian Cricketers' Association, which has left around 230 cricketers temporarily unemployed, worsened with negotiations between the two bodies breaking down on Friday.
The standoff has already caused an Australia A tour to South Africa to be abandoned, and while according to a report published yesterday on ESPNCricinfo an Australian security team is scheduled for an inspection visit to Bangladesh on July 24, the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) has apparently 'been informed it should be prepared for the possibility of the tour's cancellation'.
“To my knowledge, we have not gotten any such advice,” said BCB's media committee chairman Jalal Yunus when contacted yesterday. “I know that the inspection team are coming on July 25.
“We are fully prepared to host Australia and we believe there is still a lot of time between now and when the tour starts. Even if they decide to tour at the last moment, we are prepared for that.”
At the centre of the long-standing dispute has been CA's decision to scrap a revenue-sharing model, through which Australian cricketers were paid a fixed percentage of the board's revenue, and the ACA's desire to continue with the model. Talks involving CA chief James Sutherland and his ACA counterpart Alistair Nicholson had slowly progressed to a middle ground but according to the Cricinfo report, the negotiations have broken down, 'sending discussions all but back to square one'. The report added that Sutherland and Nicholson have however continued their dialogue.
The Australian players selected for the two-Test tour of Bangladesh are supposed to convene in Darwin for a pre-tour training camp before departing for Dhaka, where they are tentatively scheduled to reach on August 18. However, according to the report, the ACA is 'believed to be informing players of the fact that discussions may now take considerably longer than previously hoped due to the breakdown'.
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