The ridiculous three-game mini-series against South Africa earlier in the summer showed that international Twenty20 cricket has as much credibility as the Australia versus Ireland international rules series.
T20 is now nothing more than a stepping stone for countries to trial young players.
There is no honour or special talent required to make an international T20 side these days. Cricket knows it, the players know it, but most importantly the public knows it.
In the first T20 match of the series in Adelaide, a half-full stadium (26,370) was indicative of an Australian line-up that was at best the Big Bash League’s team of the year, featuring names like Nathan Reardon and Kane Richardson, who are not even close to been a part of what Australia’s national T20 team should look like.
The Australia tour of the UAE had ended only a few days earlier, so players like David Warner and George Bailey – Australia’s best T20 players – were unavailable. Schedulers have shown us their priorities, and the glorified international T20 matches are down the bottom.
The result of this has been that few take notice of international T20 cricket, preferring the domestic competition where we know our players will be the best the team has to offer and will be desperate to win. This was shown by the 42,000-odd in attendance at Tuesday night’s Adelaide Strikers versus Perth Scorchers BBL game at the Adelaide Oval.
So how do we begin to rectify a so badly ruined T20 prospect?
There are a number of solutions for this issue, the most obvious been to stop overlapping series and start re-building the international competition. But this isn’t going to happen, the schedulers will always want more, more, more.
The best solution for cricket would be to axe international T20. That way the domestic competitions would be the best there is to offer – and if the current national T20 team is anything to go by, they are.
There would be no more embarrassing performances by the ‘Australian national team’ and we might be able to preserve the integrity of the game for a bit longer. By giving internationals the axe, T20 cricket would become more respected by the fans and greatly improve the game.
I understand this result is highly unlikely because some fans will still attend both the international T20 matches and domestic competition no matter what, making it worthwhile for cricketing boards. So I fear that the game is already slipping from our grasp, going from a treasure that should be cherished to a whirlwind of random matches filled with a mixture of the best and mediocre players that no one really cares about.
It is so unfortunate that T20 cricket is being abused to the point that the game has lost the respect of those who matter most: us.
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