Steve Smith has stressed he and his Australia team-mates are “sticking really strongly together” in the dispute between Cricket Australia and their union, the Australian Cricketers’ Association.
After a training session at Lord’s, where his team are preparing for their first Champions Trophy warm-up game against Sri Lanka at The Oval on Friday, the captain spoke publicly for the first time to say the Australia players are “backing what the ACA is doing back home”. But he played down the opener David Warner’s suggestion there could be a strike unless the board agrees to meet some of the union’s demands.
“Of course we want to play in the Ashes, and of course we want everything to go well there,” Smith said. “It’s just about making sure the guys finalise a deal and get the MOU [memorandum of understanding] sorted and everything will be fine. There’s certainly nothing from us where we don’t want to play, we certainly want to be playing in the Ashes so, hopefully, they’ll get things resolved soon and everything will be back to normal.”
As it stands, the dispute means the board will stop paying the players on 30 July, and Smith, Warner, and the rest would be free to take up offers from Twenty20 sides around the world.
Smith described the row as just “a few things going on back home”, which does not square with the news elsewhere. The ACA chief executive, Alistair Nicholson, is flying to London on Friday so he and the team can discuss developments face to face. Earlier on Wednesday, the ACA announced it is planning to take over control of the players’ image rights. On 1 July, it will launch The Cricketers’ Brand, which will be responsible for the players’ commercial deals and also manage some of their access to the media.
Smith confirmed that “everyone’s signed up” to The Cricketers’ Brand, which will make the ACA financially independent from CA, which had previously been funding the association through an annual grant in exchange for those same intellectual property rights. “We’re supportive of the ACA,” he said. “They’re working really hard with CA to get a deal right. And I’m sure in time they’ll get that and everything will be OK for everyone involved.”
Even as Smith and his team were training, news broke that CA was about to agree to the ACA’s request for independent mediation of the dispute, something the board had previously rejected. “That’s news to me,” Smith said, “I think it’s great they’re trying to sort things out. As I said, we’re supporting the ACA in what they do. They’re working really hard to get what the player group want and I’m sure everything will be resolved soon.”
Smith said the team are trying to shut the row out and added he would rather be worrying about who is going to open the batting when they play their first game of the group stage on 2 June, against New Zealand at Edgbaston. “We’ve got a little bit of time before then, a couple of practice matches, a chance for a few guys to bat in these conditions and see if someone really puts their name up [for selection].
“But we’ve obviously got a few options there to go with. We’ve got some really strong batters in our lineup. So it could depend on how they go in these two practice matches we play. For us, it’s about focusing on the job at hand and that’s about competing in the Champions Trophy. These big tournaments only come around every couple of years and you want to win them, so we’re very much focused on that.”
England are the bookmakers’ favourites to win the Champions Trophy, with Australia close behind in second.
“England are a very good side and are playing at home. They have some match-winners in their lineup but a lot of the other teams are very good as well,” Smith said. “South Africa have a world-class team, India have a world-class team and there are a few others as well who on their day can play good cricket. It’s a strong competition.”
