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Date: June 20 2012
THE anticipated stand-off between Cricket Australia and its players over money was averted after the sport's governing body agreed, among other concessions, to set aside more than a quarter of the revenue generated by the 2015 World Cup for the nation's first-class players.
CA and the player's body, the Australian Cricketers' Association, have signed-off on the new Memorandum of Understanding.
The agreement has ended any chance of strike action by the national one-day team during the current tour of England because failure to have forged the new deal would've meant the players were off contract - and unprotected - after June 30.
Two major 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 Age the deadlock was broken after significant across-the-board "concessions".
The Age understands a major breakthrough was CA's decision to provide the ACA with 26 per cent of the revenue from the World Cup that will be jointly hosted by Australia and New Zealand in 2015. Other points described as "quite generous" included:
■The performance model increasing from 24.5 to 27 per cent;
■The state pool retainer growing from $6 million to $7.8 million;
■The average state cricketer's contract rising from $55,000 to $65,000.
"It's all significant and represents a very good result for the players," said the source. "The guys on the average, or basic, wage needed a boost to ensure they were on what's considered a basic wage by the general workplace standard."
CA will use the announcement of the MoU, expected this week, to confirm it had reduced the number of its contracted players from 25 to 18.
The MoU allows work to resume on the summer's schedule and for players to continue negotiations with states vying for their services after they were halted by CA while it thrashed out the deal.
It also allows for Big Bash League franchises to swap and sign players to rebuild their squads.
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