Aussies pay dispute: BCB expect Australia tour to go ahead

The Bangladesh Cricket Board expects Australia to tour next month despite the cancellation of this month’s Australia A tour of South Africa.

The divisive pay dispute between Cricket Australia and the Australian Cricketers’ Association reached a new low point on Thursday as the ACA announced the A squad would not be playing its scheduled series against the Proteas’ A side, with CA unwilling to meet the players’ requests surrounding a new Memorandum of Understanding, after the previous one expired last week.

While the prospect of this summer’s Ashes series being cancelled remains a doomsday scenario for CA, a more pressing concern is the Bangladesh tour. The Australian squad is due to arrive in Bangladesh on August 18 ahead of a warm-up fixture in Fatullah before Tests in Dhaka and Chittagong. Australian players are due to meet in the Northern Territory for a training camp before their departure. Australia have only played two Test series against Bangladesh, having not played the Tigers in a Test series away since 2006. A scheduled 2015 series was cancelled because of security fears.

But BCB chief executive Nizamuddin Chowdhury said it was all systems go for the tour from their perspective. “As far as we are concerned, we have been preparing for the series, our players are starting their camp very soon,” he told Fairfax Media. “It’s a problem between Cricket Australia and the players, an internal issue. Our preparations will go on, and we expect the series to go ahead.”

Cricket South Africa agreed with the BCB that the intricacies of the pay dispute were a matter for the Australian governing body, but a spokesman said they were close to finalising alternative arrangements for the cancelled tour.

An International Cricket Council spokeswoman declined to comment, saying that as it is a domestic matter the ICC had neither the jurisdiction nor policy to comment.

While a 13-man squad for the Bangladesh tour was announced last month, Australian selectors had left open one spot for a replacement for the injured Mitchell Starc.

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald