Accusations of name calling in meetings have "seeped in to cricket's pay war" as Cricket Australia on Tuesday "blamed the player's union for bungling talks which could lead to a lock out and threatens the Ashes," according to Russell Gould of the HERALD SUN. A scheduled meeting between the "warring parties" on Wednesday did not happen after a letter from CA Chair David Peever arrived at the Australian Cricketers' Association offices telling the union its approach was "the fundamental reason why no progress has been made." Peever, in formally refusing to mediate the matter with an independent party, called for a "mechanism" to "break the deadlock with the June 30 deadline for a new Memorandum of Understanding fast approaching." Peever wants the ACA to ditch what he called "unacceptable" preconditions about the revenue-sharing model and "start a structured negotiation almost working backwards," with arguments over the "carve up" of more than A$500M ($371.3M) in player payments for the next five years to "come last." But some close to the negotiations said that "the whole process had been farcical, that some meetings had lasted less than five minutes and devolved to catty name calling," and there remained questions as to whether CA had "any intention of wanting to deal with the ACA at all" (HERALD SUN, 5/17). In Sydney, Greg Baum reported ACA Chair Greg Dyer protested the idea that the ACA had failed to negotiate, saying that it "had sat across the table for more than 20 hours since last November." Dyer added, "To make inaccurate statements about negotiations not having begun is poor form and clearly not consistent with good faith discussions." He proposed mediation. Peever rejected this, and wrote, "The preconditions you set out in your letter are unacceptable to CA. They may be genuine issues of contention from the ACA's perspective, however they should not be an insurmountable barrier to even commencing good faith negotiations" (SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, 5/17).
