Cricket tour in jeopardy

Press, 3 October 1979, Page 38

Cricket tour in jeopardy

NZPA Sydney A disagreement over money yesterday threatened to stop England’s cricket tour of Australia next month. With only five weeks remaining before the England team is due to arrive in Sydney on November 6, England cricket authorities st : ll have not accepted Australia’s financial offer for making the tour. Financial arrangements for tours are usuallv worked out months in advance. Authoritative sources said the *wo sides were still far anar* with the Australian offer about $60,000 less than the guarantee England warned.

“We still do not know if England is coming so T sunpose you could say that at

[this stage the tour is in j doubt,” one senior Australian cricket administrator said yesterday. The chairman of the Australian Cricket Board (Mr R. Parish) confirmed that more than three weeks after the Australian offer was made in early September there had still 'been no reply from England about its acceptability. Mr Parish said that West Indies cricket authorities also had not yet accepted a similar offer for the joint tour with England from November to February. During the series England and the West Indies will play three tests each against Australia and the three countries will compete in a series of one-day games. In the last three weeks

1 there have been frequent telephone calls between Mr Parish and England officials in an attempt, to solve the deadlock. Mr Parish said he remained confident the tour would go ahead as planned but time was running short. The matter blew up when England’s players demanded tn r money than normal for the tour because they believed they would get less money than the payments made to former World Series cricketers returning tp the test arena.

Australia and England initially agreed on the financial arrangements for the series wh°n the tour was arranged during a visit to London by Mr Parish last July. Mr Parish’s visit followed one month after the split in international cricket was solved by Kerry Pa-

cker’s decision to end_ promotion of World Series cricket matches. However, several weeks later, England’s players asked for more money. Australia replied with a new’ offer that was worked out at the A.C.B.’s annual meeting in Perth early in September. Some A.C.B. members regarded the new amount, about 560.000 less than England wanted, as the final offer from Australia. Asked yesterday if the Australian offer was nonnegotiable, Mr Parish said: “In business dealings there are always grounds for negotiation.” He added that contingency plans in case England did not arrive could not be discussed because the matter was hypothetical.