We'll play T20 if no pay deal: Warner

Australia vice-captain David Warner has claimed Australia's top cricketers would head overseas and join foreign Twenty20 leagues if a new pay deal had not been agreed by the June 30 deadline.

Warner said an "extreme" case could see uncontracted players not participating in next summer's Ashes series, although he hoped that situation would not eventuate.

Warner said players "won't buckle at all" in negotiations for a new Memorandum of Understanding between players and administrators.

The Australia vice-captain is the highest profile player to speak on the pay issue, coming after Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland's blunt correspondence last week direct to the players' union, the Australian Cricketers' Association.

"If it gets to the extreme they might not have a team for the Ashes," Warner told Fairfax Media.

"I really hope they can come to an agreement ... we don't really want to see this panning out like that where we don't have a team [and] we don't have cricket in the Australian summer.

"It is up to CA to deal with the ACA. It's obviously in their hands."

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In the absence of a new deal, Warner said T20 tournaments in England and the West Indies could see an influx of Australian talent.

"For us as cricketers, if we don't have contracts we are going to have to find some cricket to play somewhere else because that's what we love doing and we're obviously going to look to maybe do something in the meantime otherwise we don't get paid," Warner said.

"A few boys might go over to play the Caribbean Premier League and I think there could be some of the England Twenty20s on as well."

"We want to keep participating for our country as much as we can, but if we don't have a job we have to go and find some cricket elsewhere."

The CPL has already held its auction for 2017, with just four Australians involved in the tournament - Queenslanders Ben Cutting and Chris Lynn, plus veterans Shane Watson and Brad Hogg.

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England's domestic T20 competition is played between July and September this year, with all counties already having secured their allowed contingent of foreign stars.

Warner said while he understood CA's intention to rest the best players, he would not be prepared to give up the lucrative IPL tournament.

"It was quite laughable when I heard about it," Warner said of the proposed provision that would limit involvement in T20 leagues like the IPL.

"It is fantastic with the security but you can't just try and stop people from playing other tournaments.

"We understand where they are coming from, they would like their best players and contracted players to have that rest.

"I see it as a great opportunity to play T20 cricket when they are scheduling T20 international cricket games when we are playing Test series – obviously there's too much cricket being played internationally.

"(The IPL) gives us a great window to get the T20 format in."

Sutherland wrote to the ACA's chief executive Alistair Nicholson last Friday and stated that if a new MOU is not agreed to before the current version expires on June 30, "players with contracts expiring in 2016-17 will not have contracts for 2017-18".

"To be very clear, in the absence of a new MOU, CA is not contemplating alternative contracting arrangements to pay players beyond 30 June if their contracts have expired," Sutherland wrote in a letter that has since been publicly posted on social media platforms.

About 70 state players are on multi-year deals and will have existing deals honoured if no new MOU agreement is reached by the June 30 deadline. Those players would, however, need a 'no objection' certificate from CA to participate in any foreign domestic competitions.

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Warner claimed players had anticipated CA's move to not offer new contracts if a new deal isn't struck but admitted surprise it had come "early" with the current deal to expire in seven weeks' time.

"We thought something along the lines of this might happen ... it's not come as a shock, but more the fact it has come so early," Warner said.

"We won't buckle at all, we are standing together and very strong, and as you can see from all the people that have spoken so far, we are all on the same wavelength.

"We want a fair share and the revenue-sharing model is what we want, so we are going to stick together until we get that

"We are not going to shy away, we are just going to stick together."

A Cricket Australia Spokesperson said that "CA is ready and willing to negotiate with the ACA".