There are only 43 days to go before the first ball is bowled in the ICC Champions Trophy, and only 77 days until the first ball of the Ashes.
This begs the question, will the Australians be gunning for their third consecutive title or will their eyes be on the prize of the Ashes?
The 2013 ICC Champions trophy will be the eighth staging of the tournament, but it will also be its last.
The ICC has publicly said it would like one championship event for each format, and with the last 50-over World Cup being a huge success, that event will continue to be the key tournament for that format.
The proposal at this stage is for the ICC Champions Trophy to be replaced on the cricketing calendar with play-offs for the World Test Championship, scheduled for June 2017.
Cricket Australia announced The Ashes squad today, yet it has delayed naming its Champions Trophy squad until first May even though the Champions Trophy will be played first.
Does this give us some insight into where these tournaments sit with the powers to be at Cricket Australia in terms of winning?
Cricket Australia are certainly not leaving anything to chance with The Ashes. They are sending an Australia A side to England at the end of May for a month which will be the ideal preparation for those players.
I am sure on some level they would have liked the ICC Champions Trophy to be scheduled after The Ashes.
With Australia not performing well in their last Test Series against India, it is important the players are given all the opportunity possible to get used to the red ball and the UK playing conditions.
But there are some challenges the team must face beforehand. There are a number of key players that are coming back from surgery and injuries to Clarke, Starc, Pattinson and Bird.
Some of the Test bowlers will be used in the Australia A tour as a way to get them ready for the all-important Ashes.
Secondly, a number of key players of the Test team are currently in India playing in the lucrative IPL tournament and enjoying success on Indian wickets, with a white ball and on smaller grounds.
It isn’t necessarily Australia’s bowling stocks that Australia has to be worried about; the pressure is still on the Australian batters to show that they are up to Test cricket against the best, and there isn’t any bigger stage than The Ashes.
I am sure that the Australian selectors are closely watching the players they have chosen to head over to participate in England’s county season.
By selecting Rogers they are certainly showing respect to that competition, and they realise that since the retirement of Ponting and Hussey they are short a few guys that are willing to grind out a Test innings.
Sorry to digress, but all cricket fans get caught up in The Ashes, right?
Returning to my initial question of whether Australia will be gunning for its third consecutive title, I believe the answer will be no.
Firstly, we haven’t even named our 30 man squad, even though it is the norm to announce them 60 days prior to tournament beginning.
Australia’s pool in the tournament contains England, New Zealand and Sri Lanka. It is an extremely tough group, and with only the top two teams progressing no one is guaranteed to move though.
I don’t actually see Australia progressing to the next stage, even if Australia was at full strength.
That being said, I feel that Australia may choose to not field their strongest possible Champions Trophy team solely because they will want to ensure that the Ashes Test players play in the Australia A squad instead of our ODI team.
Personally, I am not opposed to this strategy of selection because by the end of our Australian summer, if we come away with having won the Ashes even once no one will even remember that there was a Champions Trophy played, let alone where Australia placed.
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