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What Australia’s next cricket summer should look like

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Roar Guru
9th May, 2020
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Businesses in Australia are now cautiously working on plans to restart, now that the worst of the pandemic appears to be over.

Cricket Australia (CA) is in the same boat and has been in talks with both the ICC and the Indian Cricket Board (BCCI) about two very important tours: the men’s T20 World Cup and the proposed tour by India.

Nothing has been finalised for the 2020-21 Australian cricket summer so here are some thoughts about how the schedule could play out.

First and foremost, CA needs to give away any notion of travelling overseas to play until 2021. According to the ECB website, Australia is still scheduled to play a T20 and ODI series there in July. This is highly optimistic and there have been reports of moving this to September, when the impact of the virus should hopefully have eased in the UK.

This tour should be moved to next year. If played this year, it’s likely the players would have to quarantine in England for at least 14 days when they arrive and would certainly have to quarantine for two weeks when they return to Australia, all for the sake of three weeks of cricket. Bear in mind also that it won’t only be the players who will have to face restrictions: it’s all the other support staff and coaches.

The other issue CA may need to deal with is the IPL. Right now, the 2020 season has been suspended, but that’s not to say it won’t happen at all.

(AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

Depending on when it starts, CA should allow individual players to go to India, assuming of course they’re allowed to travel. It would be a tradeoff for the upcoming Indian tour and not all Australian Test players are contracted to IPL teams.

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The T20 World Cup in Australia should be abandoned now. There are two key elements that have to be in place to make this event work: players and crowds.

The issue with the players is that most of them would have had little or no cricket for months. The players might be able to get to Australia but they would be rusty and the spectacle would be well down on the standards expected at a World Cup.

It would also be criminal for the World Cup to go ahead without crowds, yet it would be a logistical nightmare for immigration and health officials to test and monitor those overseas cricket fans who’d want to come to Australia. Throw in the difficulty with flights, and decent crowds for this tournament in October would be nigh on impossible.

All of this leaves Australia with the option of a visit by the Indians and this is a chance to go back to an old-style tour.

India should bring a squad of at least 22 players because if they have any injuries, they won’t be able to simply fly a player in from overseas and have them slot straight into the squad.

Virat Kohli celebrating

(Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images)

That number of players, after their quarantine period is over, will require plenty of match practice, so games should be held against Shield teams, perhaps the Cricket Academy XI as well as a Territories XI. There should be at least four of these before the first Test then at least one more during the Test series and all should be four-day events.

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Running parallel to this part of the tour should be the Shield and domestic one-day competitions. There should be no reason (apart from a virus relapse) to stop these tournaments from taking place.

Just to spice things up a bit, an invitation should be made to the touring party so if they want to include a player in a Shield or one-day game, they could do so. It would give Indian fringe players much needed centre-wicket practice and perhaps even give guys like Virat Kohli or Jasprit Bumrah a chance to don the baggy blue of NSW or the maroon of Queensland.

All of these games should be available on the CA website so fans in both Australia and India can watch and perhaps some guest commentators from India could make an appearance.

This should be a five-Test series, starting in Brisbane in early November and culminating in the New Year Test in Sydney.

Straight after that, there should be a triangular ODI series including the Black Caps, with games played on both sides of the Tasman, similar to the old Benson and Hedges Cup days.

Martin Guptill

(Photo by Jason McCawley – CA/Cricket Australia via Getty Images)

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Perhaps a similar triangular T20 tournament could also be held in February, although that would mean the Indian players were away from their homes for more than four months.

The BBL would not be forgotten, but it should be played in a condensed format, starting around the last week in December and finishing in the last week in January. Both India and New Zealand could either supply players for the different franchises or even make up a team for this event, so that would ensure they had reserves available for the internationals if one of their white-ball cricketers was hurt.

The final aspect of the summer is crowds. There’s no way the top two Test-playing nations can go hard at each other in an empty stadium. Kevin Roberts has to work out a way so each Test state gives the okay for people to come to the games.

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The grounds don’t need to be filled as they might have been 12 months ago, but even a half or a third of the usual number would be enough to provide some atmosphere. There are enough fanatical Indian fans already in Australia and plenty of Aussies who will make enough noise to well and truly make up for the lack of numbers.

It will be interesting to see what the final schedule looks like. In some ways, the upcoming season harks back to the 1970s, when cricket players and fans were starved of the game through the off-season, which made for lots of anticipation and the Tests all the better to watch.

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There appears to be a great chance for CA to host a terrific tour. Yes, it would be nice to also host the World Cup but if that’s not possible, why not make the Indian tour a memorable one?

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