Category: Australia Cricket

Test gloveman Alex Carey’s century has left the Sheffield Shield final on a knife’s edge as Victoria head into the final day at the Junction Oval needing 94 runs for the title with five wickets in hand.

Virat Kohli hit an unbeaten 69 as defending champions Royal Challengers Bengaluru thrashed Sunrisers Hyderabad by six wickets in the IPL season opener on Saturday, after a tribute in memory of the 11 fans who died in a stampede last year.

From despair to jubilation.

The 19th edition of the Indian Premier League gets underway this weekend, with the Royal Challengers Bengaluru hosting the Sunrisers Hyderabad on Sunday morning at 1am AEDT.

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.

Cricket Australia has backflipped on its decision to deny a pundit entry to the Sheffield Shield final at Melbourne’s Junction Oval because he was wearing a ‘Free Imran Khan’ shirt.

The Sheffield Shield final will effectively revert to a four-day match after day one was severely impacted by tempestuous weather.

England opener Ben Duckett has made the decision to withdraw from this year’s Indian Premier League, while he has also shed light on his infamous Noosa incident during the summer’s disastrous Ashes tour.

As Sam Elliott was preparing for his first Sheffield Shield final beginning today in Melbourne, the Victorian fast bowler with big aspirations was balancing the old with the new.

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.

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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.