CSA's austerity plans could lead to 70 players' contract loss: SACA

The South African Cricketers' Association (SACA) feels Cricket South Africa (CSA)'s austerity plans is likely to lead to at least 70 players losing their contracts.

It will also lead to reduced earnings for many other franchise level South African cricketers.

The austerity plans include restructuring of CSA domestic cricket from franchise to a first-class cricket system, re-organisation of domestic T20 competitions, optimising player contracts and delay or suspend any new project that do not have sound revenue-generation potential.

SACA's chief executive Tony Irish said it wanted to play its part in dealing with the challenge but CSA went ahead with its plans without properly engaging with them.

"CSA has instead gone ahead with the announcement of a restructure of domestic cricket, to effectively merge the franchise and provincial systems, as part of its austerity plan, without any meaningful consultation with SACA and despite the fact that this will directly affect the players," he said.

"This restructure, announced as part of cost saving measures, is likely to lead to at least 70 players losing their contracts and many other players at franchise level having their earnings reduced.

"The 'human impact' of this is significant. SACA has a collective agreement in place with CSA, franchises and provinces, known as the MOU, which deals with these issues yet CSA has, in announcing this structure, disregarded that agreement."
"SACA has formally written to CSA twice in the last six weeks to express its concerns relating to CSA's financial position, (but) to date we haven't received any reply at all to those letters."
"A four-year deficit amounting to hundreds of millions of rands is unprecedented in South African cricket and is a serious concern to us as the representative of the players. We have asked CSA for clarity and to date it has not provided this."