Cricket Australia's pay dispute finally finds a resolution 

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The Australians will soon be back on the field

What’s the story?

On Thursday afternoon, the long running disagreement between Cricket Australia and Australian Cricketers’ Association finally found a mutual ground when they signed off an agreement document for a new Memorandum of Understanding. The cricketers have finally got back their employment, and the fans can await the upcoming tours of Bangladesh, India, the home Ashes series and more.

In case you didn’t know...

For over 10 months now, there was a constant disagreement between the cricket body and its players, which also threatened to call-off the upcoming tours of Australia, most important the Ashes series.

The point of disagreement was the revenue sharing model, which, according to the cricket board was outdated, but the players thought it was something that should be kept in place for the game to prosper in the future.

The heart of the matter

The players were unemployed since July 1. 230 cricketers were left without contracts in the country. Earlier this month, Australia A’s tour to South Africa was called off due to the same reason.

It was only a few days before the team was to leave for South Africa that their tour was called-off and their place was taken by the Afghanistan A team.

Given that the situation only worsened with each passing day, the Australian Cricketers' Association sent their Commercial Manager, Tim Cruickshank flew to India to look for "commercial opportunities" for the unemployed Australian players who were in hunt of domestic leagues around the world in order to compensate for the loss of not being paid for international cricket.

Eventually, after 10 months of the conundrum, the two parties have given a mutual agreement on a ‘modernised revenue sharing model.’

What’s next?

Now that a mutual agreement has been signed, the upcoming tours will fall in place. Australia will tour Bangladesh for the first time since 2006 for a three Test series from August 22 to September 8.

This will be followed by the tour to India for five ODIs and three T20s from September 17 to October 11, and then the all-important Ashes series at home from November 23 to January 8. A media conference will be held in Melbourne on Thursday afternoon for further details.

Author’s take

Sooner or later, the two parties had to come to a mutual agreement for cricket in Australia, something that has flourished through ages, to continue to prosper. It was just a matter of time and this is welcome news for all across the cricketing world.

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