Australia's postponed South African tour sets up brilliant domestic finale

The news no one wanted but everyone expected finally came on Tuesday evening. Australia’s tour to South Africa has been postponed.

With a new variant of COVID-19 and cases still high (despite a reduction from the peak of the country’s second wave), it was deemed too much of a risk for Australia’s cricketers to spend over a month in the Republic.

While the recent Sri Lankan tour to the African nation went off without a hitch, the failed earlier England tour is still in the back of the mind, and Cricket Australia’s decision to protect the health and safety of their players and staff must be applauded, despite a strongly-worded statement from Cricket South Africa last night.

The decision from CA also ruins the outside chance Tim Paine’s side had of making the World Test Championship final in the middle of this year, but with Australia potentially about to enter a transitional phase, it may not be the worst thing to push reset a little earlier.

With rescheduled Tests against Bangladesh and South Africa (both away from home), it will add to an already busy calendar for the remainder of this year and into the next one as the world hopefully starts to pull away from the grip of COVID.

Of course, that is up for scientific debate and not an issue we will get into here, but the bottom line is, when the world does start to move away, there is going to be a lot of cricket to be played across all three formats.

And that all means a close to full-strength Sheffield Shield and domestic one-day cup to the end of the season suddenly has a lot more importance.

While it’s not yet known whether the touring squad to New Zealand for five T20 matches will be improved, there is a good chance CA will elect to leave the side captained by Aaron Finch as is and ramp up domestic cricket to the end of the season.

With the full one-day cup to be played, totalling seven matches for each state, as well as between five and seven Sheffield Shield matches to be played by each state across a roughly two-month window, it’ll be the first time in a long time domestic cricket is going to be close to full strength.

A tournament that was looking like finishing as a glorified edition of grade cricket is now going to take a different shape, with many players pushing for their form or international careers.

After a beatdown at the hands of India on home soil over the summer, eventually losing the series 3-1 with all of the last three Tests going badly against Australia, the talent coming back isn’t a sure thing to succeed and score bucketloads of runs either.

Storylines include the form of Tim Paine and David Warner, the lack of wickets for Mitchell Starc and Nathan Lyon, and whether players like Mitch Swepson, Travis Head, Will Pucovski, Marcus Harris and Matt Renshaw can further their case.

Mitchell Swepson (Photo by Michael Dodge/Getty Images)

The battle of Swepson and Lyon will be particularly interesting given Swepson’s start to the Shield season, which saw him take 23 wickets at 21, becoming the best bowler of the opening rounds in tough conditions.

The other player who would love to be available is Matthew Wade, given his torrid time this summer and eventual dropping for the tour to South Africa, but he will join the Aussie team heading to New Zealand. Jhye Richardson, Mitch Marsh and Ben McDermott are among others who will miss a chance to build red-ball form, but it won’t take too much away from the quality of cricket on these shores.

Then there is the fun in watching the older guard, with players like Shaun Marsh and Usman Khawaja now having the best of the best bowlers to face.

Unlike the start of the season, where all matches were played on (mainly) roads in South Australia, this is going to be home and away, with chances for all to succeed.

The major factor to note here is that any player who succeeds will be doing so against great players. Whether it’s a bowler who breaks through and takes bags of wickets, or a batsman scoring lots of runs, instead of those efforts having an asterisk next to them (as they would have before the South African tour was postponed), they will be noteworthy because of the quality faced.

While the one-day cup is yet to begin, the Sheffield Shield has Queensland and New South Wales at the top. It’s hard to see a full-strength NSW struggling in either competition, while Western Australia are currently third (but with one extra game played) and always a danger.

This is a competition fans will be able to get behind and invest in, something domestic cricket has been crying out for.

The best talent in Australian cricket will play a prolonged run of state cricket, with this to set the form line for any cricket the national team plays over the winter.

Not only that, there are two trophies on the line.

It’s not a typical Australian summer, but in the circumstances, it’s about as good as we could have asked for.