Cricket Australia chief executive Todd Greenberg is hopeful of lifting the WBBL and BBL contracting embargo next week but admitted it should have already happened as negotiations with the players' association and the states continue over privatising the competitions.
Teams and players have been left in limbo for the upcoming season with a contracting embargo still in place with just over two months to go before the WBBL starts.
CA and the Australian Cricketers' Association (ACA) have been negotiating to update the Memorandum of Understanding (the players' pay deal) ahead of an attempt to bring private investment into the Big Bash.
Leading Australian male BBL players have been frustrated that they have been earning far less than overseas players in recent years, and well below global market rates available in the SA20 and ILT20, because of the overseas draft.
Negotiations have been taking place to scrap the draft and funnel more of the established salary cap to local players. But one of the issues being debated is that such a move may end up skyrocketing some overseas salaries for unsigned players in the short term, with the likes of Ben Stokes and Finn Allen being highly sought-after, while many local stars are locked under existing contracts.
Greenberg was hopeful it could be sorted by early next week but admitted it had taken too long.
"We've got to unlock the contracting system pretty quickly," Greenberg said on Thursday while attending the first Test against Bangladesh in Darwin. "I think there's some final conversations going on at the moment, but yeah, we should have resolved it by now, so we've got to get moving.
"We've got a big season to run. We want to be as successful as we can."
The secondary issue is the longer-term renegotiation of the MoU, which is currently in place until 2028. CA was asked by the states in June to agree to a deal with the ACA, as one of four principles, before putting BBL teams up for sale to private investors.
That had come the day after the ACA said the players were not aligned with CA in the negotiations with the ACA pushing for a larger long-term revenue share than the current 27.5%.
Two months on, Greenberg revealed that they are still not aligned despite speaking to ACA CEO Paul Marsh on Wednesday.
"We're just at a fundamental difference at the moment," Greenberg said. "Australian cricket are strong believers and supporters of the revenue share model. I think it's been great for cricket. It's great for the players.
"What we're not supportive of is increasing the amount of percentage [share] that is. And so the ACA have put forward a proposal which increases it, and we've rejected that one. So we've got to find a way to get an outcome that's palatable for the ACA and palatable for us."
Greenberg also noted that overhauling the structure of CA, state, BBL and WBBL contracts due to the changing landscape of global cricket is a priority in the negotiations. Almost everyone in Australian cricket agrees the current structure, including the amount of contracts, their financial worth and the flexibility of playing commitments, is badly outdated and not fit for purpose given the vast franchise opportunities on offer for players beyond international and domestic cricket.
Aside from the ongoing negotiations with the ACA, Greenberg was optimistic about progressing with the states on BBL privatisation after CA's board met on Wednesday.
Greenberg will travel to Sydney and Brisbane with CA chair Mike Baird to meet with the New South Wales and Queensland's boards to discuss their continued reservations about the future funding models that have been proposed from selling initial stakes in the BBL clubs that choose to go to market, with Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania all keen to push ahead.
"I'm feeling both comfortable and positive," Greenberg said. "Yesterday was an important moment for the board to get the latest update. I would suggest that by early to mid-September we will effectively make a final determination on the project.
"Mike and I have got sessions with the boards of both New South Wales Cricket and Queensland Cricket in the next few weeks, and we want to have those conversations and we want to have them in person before we go back to the board in September to make a final call."