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Crisis in Australian cricket: 5 senior cricketers unhappy and some BBL stars are contemplating playing overseas

A lot is happening in Cricket Australia, if reports are to be believed.

Updated on: May 9, 2026, 20:54:24 IST
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Cricket Australia is in hot water at present, to all intents and purposes.

Reports say Pat Cummins has been offered USD 12m. (AFP)
Reports say Pat Cummins has been offered USD 12m. (AFP)

Its plans to privatise the Big Bash League (BBL) have hit a wall after three of its cricket associations said no to its proposal. Out of six associations, it needed five to say yes to carry the plans through, but that has not been the case.

Now there is more crisis coming its way. If a report in Code Sports is to be believed, as many as five senior cricketers are not happy with the central contracts they have been offered by Cricket Australia, and they haven't signed them yet.

Also Read: Cricket Australia agrees to look at alternatives after opposition to its private ownership BBL model

Plus, after the privatisation plans have been rejected, there are reports that many BBL stars may now choose to play overseas. They have been earning less money for years now, and the privatisation would have addressed that -- to their satisfaction.

Cricket Australia chief executive Todd Greenberg late last month had explained the hurdle.

"There may be a world where some want to do this, and some don't, or some want to do it now, and some want to do it in another time frame. Option A for us has always been that we do it at the same time to extract the maximum value in the market.

"But clearly we're not at that point. So we now have to reassess what comes next," Greenberg told reporters.

"We would have to get some deep analysis to understand the impacts on Australian cricket, because if you get back to the very objective that we started with, to do this, it needs to benefit the entire sport.

“We have to look at that lens in the decisions that we make. And we've now got some analysis to do if that's the case or not,” he added.

There are fears among the associations that privatisation of the BBL can take control away from them.

 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Prateek Srivastava

Prateek Srivastava is a senior sports journalist having been in the profession for two decades now. He started his print career with the India Today Group and later also worked for the Asian Age.   In 2009, sensing the wind of change, he switched to the digital media and joined Mobile ESPN. There, he covered the 2011 Cricket World Cup and 2010 Hockey World Cup as a venue reporter. He did plenty of voice-over work too, over there.   After leaving Mobile ESPN, Prateek went on to work for Cricketnext, Gocricket and Cricbuzz. At Gocricket (Times Internet Limited), he covered the 2014 T20 World from Bangladesh. There he also received a team leadership award, given at the end of the month.   Prateek has also covered the 2016 T20 World Cup in India, this time working for Sportz Interactive. He also worked for Chinese giants Alibaba over two years and led their ""Short News"" content team at UC Browser.   While cricket is Prateek’s expertise, he has also done a lot of golf. In fact, he has covered India’s first two European Tour events back in the late noughties. He has also done extensive writing on football having been associated with the Indian Super League for three seasons. Finally, Prateek is a literature aficionado and swears by Philip Roth and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and when he doesn’t joke, he is usually quiet and at work.

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