Category: Cricket

Four matches in four weeks for the men’s team compromises the quality of the sport – and makes the Test season a contradiction in terms

This has long been on the way, and here it is. Test season, the centrepiece of Australia’s summer, will next time around consist of four matches played over four weekends, not starting until the second week of December and done a week into January. Cricket Australia will instead claim to have expanded the schedule to seven Tests, but their tropical excursion against Bangladesh is in August, and the pink-ball sideshow masquerading as the 150th anniversary Test will have half its overs in March darkness. Both are distant islands to the summer mainland. Unlike most cricket countries, Tests are still Australia’s most substantial earner and site of interest. Yet in a world of sports trying to claim more of the calendar, Australian administrators are in voluntary retreat.

Even as recent decades have squeezed the format into shorter series, while tour matches are euthanised and preparation is eroded as an outdated luxury, there still has to be time within a series itself. Two matches could run back to back, maybe three, but any longer and there has to be space built into the tour, gaps of a week or 10 days to offset the physical demand. Those pauses also gave the audience time for breath; they let players rest and storylines compound. Much of the rhythm of cricket is in waiting.

It is the blockbuster schedule that shapes as the ultimate challenge for Australia, a legacy-defining stanza set to test the mettle of some of the nation’s best ever according to a couple of former greats.

The Chennai Super Kings have signed Australian quick Spencer Johnson as a replacement player for Nathan Ellis, who has been ruled out of this year’s Indian Premier League due to injury.

Victorian seamer Mitch Perry has missed selection for this week’s Sheffield Shield final against reigning champions South Australia in Melbourne.

In December, Cameron Green became the highest-paid international cricketer in Indian Premier League history, signed by the Kolkata Knight Riders for 25.2 crore, about AU$4.17 million.

Rising star Georgia Voll has proven she’s a worthy successor for the retired Alyssa Healy in the national side, cracking her maiden T20I century during the rain-affected series finale against the West Indies in St. Vincent.

Brendon McCullum and England’s leadership cohort have survived the Ashes debacle but Aussie icon Adam Gilchrist said it is clear the rival regime needs to learn from the mistakes they made in a disastrous tour of Australia.

The Gold Coast Dolphins are on the verge of winning their first Queensland Premier Cricket title in 17 years courtesy of a record-breaking partnership between Hugo Burdon and Stephan Muller at Allan Border Field over the weekend.

England coach Brendon McCullum will keep his job despite the team’s Ashes debacle, with cricket chief Richard Gould insisting he can “adapt and evolve”.

Cricket Australia chief executive Todd Greenberg remains confident the BBL is well positioned to expand internationally despite an offer to New Zealand for inclusion in the T20 league from 2028 being rejected on Monday.

During the 2022 New Year’s Ashes Test at the SCG, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison walked into the Fox Cricket broadcast studio ahead of a brief cameo in the commentary box.