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SYDNEY. — Australia’s cricket board gambled that greed would motivate top players into accepting a pay offer and while that bet has backfired the parties are likely to thrash out a deal in time to avert an Ashes boycott, former captain Ian Chappell has said. Players have rejected Cricket Australia’s (CA) offer that would end a 20-year-old revenue-sharing model when the next collective bargaining agreement starts in July.

The proposal offers more money than the current five-year CBA but allows only international players to share in surplus revenues, while domestic cricketers would have to settle for fixed amounts.

Former test skipper Chappell was a leading figure in Australian cricket’s most bitter pay dispute in the 1970s, which paved the way for the breakaway World Series Cricket. — Reuters.