Slater comes across as a bitter, jealous merkin. He was a great player and one who I thoroughly enjoyed watching. He would be earning good money if he was playing in the current era but he's not and you can see it sh*ts him no end having to get up at 3am for BSB because he wasn't able to cash in.
I remember reading an article a few years ago regarding player salaries of cricketers. IIRC, each player on the 1993 Ashes tour got $75k and, $90k during the 1993/94 summer (including the tour of South Africa). There wasn't a sliding scale like there is today, where players in the squad earn different amounts. Back then, all players annual ACB contracts were the same and this remained the status quo until Mark Taylor became captain. In a recent interview Dean Jones did with Crash Craddock on Cricket Legends, all players were offered $15k/year contracts from the ACB/Packer during the South African rebel tour crisis in the mid '80s, which was miniscule compared to the $200k the players that went on the rebel tour got. So, contract and match payments have come a long way since then and full-time players today don't have jobs outside of cricket like most of the national players did until at least the early '90s.
$75-90k might not sound much compared to players today, but still quite a lot during the early-mid '90s (in the highest tax bracket at the time) compared to what average wages were like during the downturn of the economy which lingered for a few years after the stock market crash, let alone factoring in inflation.
Central contracts, match payments and sponsorships started to increase appreciably when Mark Taylor took over as captain in 1994/95. The larger 3rd party sponsorships (such as Shane Warne's with Nike) appeared and increased from the second half of the '90s.
So, Slater (who played during 1993-2001) would've still earned in the 6 digit category from after he got back into the Australian test team in 1998 to the end of his career and would've earned enough to retire comfortably. After all, I remember on the interview he did with Andrew Denton a decade or so ago, he did own a Ferrari in the period leading up to his omission after the national squad in 2001, so it's his own fault if he's squandered the money due to poor decisions in life. Yeah, the numerical amount of what he earned maybe only a fraction of what players today get, but crying poor, being envious and making the audience feel like he didn't get paid well at all is nonsense. After all, I'm sure his comfortable job at Ch9 in the summer pays him very well to the point where he doesn't have to do the 2KY gig.
