Just days after the resumption of negotiations in cricket’s pay dispute, the Cricket Australia chairman, David Peever, has launched an extraordinary counterattack on the media and critics of the administrative body, and accused the Australian Cricketers’ Association of behaving in a “reckless” manner.

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The former managing director of Rio Tinto has written in a column for the Australian that it is “deeply insulting” to the game that CA is supposed by its critics to be “motivated by some extreme industrial relations agenda” in its dispute with players.

Peever labelled as “tawdry” any media suggestions that CA had imported industrial relations practices from the mining industry, and took particular aim at the former Labor minister and Australian Council of Trade Unions boss Greg Combet. “It has been fabricated by those seeking to portray cricket as an industrial relations battleground, and pushed out to undermine CA’s case for modest but necessary changes to the player payment mode,” Peever wrote.

“That a former politician and adviser to the ACA, Greg Combet, has been a foremost public proponent of this myth ought to ring alarm bells. I have no recollection of discussing either industrial relations or cricket with Combet and can only conclude he has some old axe to grind on unrelated matters.”

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Peever and CA are sticking steadfastly to the public relations strategy of stressing that the move to end the revenue-sharing agreement enjoyed by players for 20 years before the 30 June expiry of the memorandum of understanding is required to fund grassroots cricket.

The timing of Peever’s comments will be viewed by many of the game’s stakeholders as particularly inopportune, given that the CA chief, James Sutherland, and the players’ association chief, Alastair Nicholson, resumed negotiations on Tuesday with a view to ending the impasse. ESPN Cricinfo reported that Sutherland and Nicholson met for four hours in an attempt to break the deadlock, and planned future meetings on the matter.

Despite that progress, Peever took another swipe at the ACA, saying it wasn’t behaving like an organisation trying to achieve the players’ goal of remaining “partners” in the game, and had rejected “a very generous” proposal from CA.

“The ACA has responded by not only rejecting that proposal (and recent concessions) out of hand, but by launching a campaign of such sustained ferocity that anyone could be forgiven for thinking CA was proposing the reintroduction of slavery,” he wrote.

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“Not content with that level of overreaction, the ACA has gone much further, refusing to allow players to tour, threatening to drive away commercial sponsors and damage the prospects of broadcast partners, lock up player intellectual property into its own business ventures, and even stage its own games. It’s a reckless strategy that can only damage the game and therefore the interests of the ACA’s members.”

Peever also scotched any suggestions that CA would seek to limit the future influence of the ACA once a deal was struck. “When this dispute is resolved, I would like to see the ACA resume the important and constructive role it has played in cricket until recent times. Any claims that I hold contrary views are untrue.”

Tuesday’s negotiations came almost a week after the decision of Australia A players to abandon their tour of South Africa – the latest in a number of skirmishes that have indicated the players’ steadfast refusal to comply with CA after the expiry of their contracts. Far more serious are the ramifications if upcoming commitments against Bangladesh, India and a home Ashes series are cancelled.