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Test players bowled over by Pakistan turn and T20 spin

Glenn Maxwell rolls his arm over for Australia. (Photo: AAP image)
Roar Guru
4th November, 2014
3

The Australian international summer rolls into action today, with game one of the T20 series against South Africa taking place at Adelaide Oval.

Well that’s great I thought, packing away my favourite footy scarf, until a South African colleague barked, “You guys are next to no chance without Glenn Maxwell.”

Slow on the uptake after several late-night Pakistani horror movies, it finally dawned – how can the Aussies be in two places at once?

Tail between legs in Abu Dhabi on Monday then eyeing cow-corner in Adelaide on Wednesday, that’s the schedule, but of course not a back-to-back reality for the players.

I would accept a Cricket Australia explanation basing Maxwell’s absence on a mistakenly delivered Test batsman’s tour itinerary. But when David Warner, Mitch Marsh, James Faulkner, Mitch Johnson and Mitch Starc are in transit from another hemisphere, I’ll question Cricket Australia’s clumsy home schedule and demand to know if the Australian emblem has been tarnished.

Player rotation and back-to-back Test scheduling are always hot topics but the opportunity to play for your country in consecutive contests is clubbed for six when the team is double booked across different continents.

The over-used excuse of ‘commercial obligations’ doesn’t cut it either. With the three-match series due for completion on Sunday the first could have been played on Friday – it’s only T20, play two in one day or make it a two-game series.

Better still, scrap the entire series and increase the Indian Test series to five with the inclusion of a Perth Test in a modified schedule of meaningful cricket.

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Too late for change now, but Cricket Australia learn this: the crowd don’t like paying full price for second XI cricket, and the players don’t like being robbed of opportunities to represent the green and gold.

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