ormer captain Mark Taylor is confident that Australian players are next in line to suffer from pay cuts due to the financial crisis that the country’s cricket board is in under at the moment due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Cricket Australia Chief Executive Kevin Roberts told staff that they are facing a financial crisis and would not have been able to pay its bills at the end of August without layoffs, local media reported on Saturday.
CA announced plans to lay off almost 80% of staff, putting them on 20% pay until June 30 when it is hoped more will be known about how long government curbs put in place to control the coronavirus will last.
Mark Taylor, who served as CA director until 2018, now believes that the “players will be next” to take pay cuts.
“There will be paycuts, as we’ve seen from CA staff. Players will be next. I also suspect that Cricket Australia and the ACA (Australian Cricketers’ Association) have been working together on this.
“I hope they get their heads together and sort out a good solution for the near future,” said Taylor on the Nine Network.
“Six months is a long time. It may not be long enough in this pandemic, but it might be long enough to get some cricket in October which may save Cricket Australia and the players from taking too big a paycut. Nobody has a crystal ball to work out when and how much this will affect cricket,” Taylor added.
