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The all-important Ashes tour starts in June. This is April. The last serious match the Australian cricketers played was in March.
And that was on India’s spin tops – as poor a preparation for an Ashes series in England on seaming grassy pitches as you can imagine.
The difference is more cheese and soap than cheese and chalk.
Also let’s forget the IPL T20 matches going on in India, where some Australians are running around aimlessly.
The Sheffield Shield is over and the NRL, AFL and SBW are taking up all the sports space.
That’s where my mad as a hatter idea comes in. I can imagine you laughing hysterically when reading the next paragraph, chortling, “Kersi has really lost it today!”
Why not have two or three three-day practice matches in Perth on grassy pitches next month between two Australian teams?
What, cricket in footy season?
I can hear you ask, “Won’t there be two four-day matches in England (against Somerset and Worcestershire) before the first Test starts on July 10 in Nottingham?”
But we know how the British psyche works.
I bet the pitches for these matches will be without grass and batsmen friendly.
Then the Test series will start and suddenly it will be green grass everywhere, in-swing, out-swing, reverse-swing with Duke balls.
Please, Cricket Australia, don’t fall for this three-card trick.
The morale of Michael Clarke’s men is already low after the trouncing in India. The young Aussie team has little experience of the seaming heaven which is the UK.
Three-day matches on the grassy WACA of 1980s and 1990s vintage (and not the docile pitches Perth is preparing these days) in May will separate men from boys. They will be toughened by such practice games.
Here are my suggestions for these matches:
• Use the English duke balls, which swing more than the Australian Kookaburra balls.
• Reduce the distance between wickets from bowler to batsman by one metre.
• Recall the batsman if he has scored under 30 runs.
This would be an ideal preparation for the tough tour of England ahead than net practice and the boot camp.
Is this an airy-fairy idea? All new ideas are considered airy-fairy and subjected to ridicule until they are given a free reign and then bingo!