Soon, there will be an Australian team walking out against Sri Lanka for three T20s.
The side will be filled with professionals, with men who work for this opportunity. To be the best of the best Australia can field. Only, when they walk out against Sri Lanka, there will be players who are there because other players are in India.
This is ridiculous, but it’s also normal.
This situation is not news. This situation in general, and this situation specifically. Stuart Clark has christened this series the ‘Who Cares Cup’ and it is not hard to understand his position. But I don’t want to feel this way.
Michael Klinger has worked so hard for so long for this moment. It should have come with highly-regarded player wearing a coloured vest, watching him bat on the bench. To represent your country in cricket is an honour, and one Klinger richly deserves.
And when the schedule means that the best eleven cricketers cannot take the park for a team… well call the major, because there is a problem. Yet such non-representative teams seem inevitable now. The paying of tax even feels less inevitable compared to this recurring situation.
The World T20 is the best T20 competition in the world. It is the only Twenty20 tournament in the world which features Indian and Pakistan players. Pakistan players are not picked in the IPL, while Indian players are not allowed to play by the BCCI in other franchise tournaments.
But outside of the World T20, internationals are not as convincing as the domestic tournaments, perpetually at their high school reunion. Look how much we mean! Look how much we’ve changed!
Ok, so people will still watch. Every night is T20 night. Over-saturation won’t pay a price until much later.
To see Aaron Finch temporarily regain the captaincy he was unlucky to lose is a great sight. But it doesn’t stop the grating feeling that one feels about the Australian T20 team once again becoming the other Australian team.
It was counter-productive for the last two World T20s, and even with home advantage, it is difficult to see how that advantage on its own will outdo the negatives of a constantly changing team.
World T20s aren’t about to go away. Considering the competitiveness of many teams and the high quality of cricket, it is hard to see a decent cricket reason for why abolition of the tournament would be a good idea.
World Cups and domestic cricket are the way of the future, with only international cricket when it is possible and justifiable. No format of the game can afford to live in the echo chamber of a few teams.
So, in a sense it is fortuitous that the next World T20 is in Australia, as it will force more people in Australia to take it more seriously, from people inside cricket to outside cricket.
Because if and when Australia face Sri Lanka in a World T20 in Australia, all their players will be in Australia. But that will only help if Australia knows their best team, in spite of the schedule, not because of it.
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