D-Day hour in the New Zealand cricket pay dispute has been allocated to 4pm on Tuesday, November 5.

And if the New Zealand Cricket Players' Association does not accept the increased New Zealand Cricket (NZC) offer made today, the bargaining process will go up in Guy Fawke's Day smoke.

NZC chief executive Martin Snedden, backed by his board after their meeting today, made a final offer of another $300,000.

The money will come from some grass roots and some high performance activities that would have been otherwise undertaken by NZC.

The increased offer gives international players effectively an 11% wage increase over what they received last year, back-dated to May 1, 2002 while domestic first-class players will get an 18% increase, back-dated to October 1, 2002.

He said that he would be surprised if domestic cricket players didn't think their offer was a good one.

Snedden said that if the offer was not accepted the initial casualties will be the State Max traditional season opener on November 16-17, the Provincial 'A' national 2nd XI competition and there will be format changes to domestic cricket for this year.

"Cricket will be played this summer. The players now have to choose whether they want to be part of that," Snedden said.

"I am disappointed it has got to this stage but this is a major crisis and across-the-board sacrifices will have to be made," he said.

NZC will not be funding the Players' Association as that would be a conflict of interest, Snedden said.

He also rejected claims from the Association that the players had not been consulted when the four-yearly programme had been established.

"The Players' Association didn't exist at the time the programme was set," he said.

Snedden added that he had been in very close consultation with the players on every major decision that had been made recently and NZC had opened the books to player scrutiny probably more than most other organisations would ever allow.

"I totally reject any criticism of what we have provided for them," he said.

The Association assertion that the international players should get their share of the financial cake first, and that the rest of the game should be funded by what was left could not be accepted if cricket was to survive in New Zealand, he said.

The players might be satisfied with the returns for two or three years, but five or seven years down the structure would not exist to support the game.

"They now face a very important decision about whether they want to be part of this year's programme," he said.

Snedden warned that the failure of the Players' Association to accept the offer would result in a withdrawal from the negotiation and open the way to approaches to individual players.

He said he would use whatever players who wanted to play.

© CricInfo