Australia A’s tour of South Africa will not go ahead, with the players opting out on Thursday as a result of their unresolved pay dispute with Cricket Australia (CA).

Clouds have hovered over the tour for months while CA and the Australian Cricketers’ Association (ACA) remained at loggerheads over a future funding model. With no breakthrough achieved, the selected players finally moved to boycott the tour on Thursday, two days before they were scheduled to fly out to South Africa.

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“By making this call, the Australia A players have sacrificed their own ambitions for the collective,” the ACA said in a statement. “(It’s) an incredibly selfless act that shows their strength and overall commitment to the group.”

The Australia A players for the July-August tour have been training in Brisbane after assembling there on Monday. The ACA had resolved at an emergency meeting on Sunday to not proceed with the tour unless a breakthrough with CA was struck after a June 30 deadline for a Memorandum of Understanding was missed.

The failure to strike a deal has left some 230 cricketers unemployed. The ACA said on Thursday no progress toward solving the dispute had been made.

“All players are deeply disappointed at the behaviour of CA which forces this course of action, given the players would rather be playing for their country. CA refuse to attend mediation or offer any genuine flexibility in the MOU negotiations. And without mediation it’s hard to see how there can be the progress necessary to reach agreement.”

About 230 cricketers are effectively unemployed after last weekend’s expiry of a Memorandum of Understand (MoU) which covered wages.

CA says discussions this week should have allowed the Australia A tour to go ahead. “Cricket Australia regrets that players have made this decision despite progress made in talks between CA and the ACA in meetings over the past week,” CA said in a statement on Thursday.

“While a new MOU has not yet been agreed, CA is of the view that these talks should have enabled the tour to proceed as planned. CA will continue to work towards a new MOU which is in the interests of both the players and the game and calls upon the ACA to show the flexibility clearly now needed to achieve that outcome.”

The tour was to include four-day matches and a limited overs tri-series, also involving India A. Australia A’s squad of 19 for both formats included Test players Usman Khawaja, Glenn Maxwell and Jackson Bird.