Players are prepared to give Cricket Australia as late as Friday to make genuine progress in pay talks and save the Australia A tour to South Africa.
As the A squad started training in Brisbane on Tuesday, discussions continued between CA chief James Sutherland and his Australian Cricketers Association counterpart Alistair Nicholson to find a resolution to the bitter pay dispute that has left 230 of Australia's players unemployed. Despite Sutherland's involvement, CA's top executive remains outside of its official negotiation team spearheaded by Kevin Roberts.
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Cricket's pay dispute explained
Australia's cricketers are effectively unemployed after failing to reach an agreement with the sport's governing body.
The South Africa tour is considered highly unlikely to go ahead with CA and players still a long way apart. Players are due to fly from Brisbane to Sydney on Friday night before leaving for South Africa on Saturday morning. The Test series in Bangladesh in August is also in peril if a new pay deal cannot be reached.
Relations between players and CA are at a low with some wondering how they can improve even if there was to be a swift resolution.
![Cool relations: Usman Khawaja, ACA staff members Clea Smith and Alistair Nicholson, and Shane Watson listen to questions ...](http://web.archive.org./web/20170706232545im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/x/3/5/e/b/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gx4hoa.png/1499158140021.jpg)
Former Australian wicketkeeping great Ian Healy criticised both sides for allowing the dispute to get this far. Healy is a former president of the players union.
"It's terrible that both sides haven't had these sorts of arguments and engagement about a year ago," Healy said on Sky Sports Radio on Tuesday.
"There should have been three or four drafts of a proposal put to each other by both sides and tweaked here and tweaked there.
"Now it's rush, rush, rush. It's been half-communicated."
Both parties remain at loggerheads over the revenue-share model, in place since 1997, which the ACA wants kept. The players want a share of gross revenue but CA say that model is outdated and are only offering a share of surplus. How best to fund the game at grassroots level remains a source of debate.
"The money's good, the pot's big, let's get in and sort the model out. It's not that hard," Healy said.
Some players believe CA could have averted the current crisis by lowering the revenue share rather than scrapping the model.
Players want to see a disclosure of financial information from CA but the governing body says 80 per cent of its revenue is unconfirmed, including new TV rights. CA said it gave the ACA enough information two weeks ago for the union to assess a revised pay offer.
"This is the first time in 20 years that they've given insufficient financial projections of the revenues for the next five years," Healy said.
"So the ACA, the players, have said, 'we can't make sound enough decisions moving forward for the next five years based on that, give us what you normally give us'.
"So they're a little bit suspicious Cricket Australia have changed their modus operandi and haven't consulted.
"When anyone brings such big change into any business, you've got to consult. And the consultancy should have begun a year ago."