The Katich incident was well before Clarke was captain. He was still just a young upstart batsman at that point. Unless you mean Clarke being captain years later likely being one of the catalysts for the end of Katich’s test career. But then, I totally get that too. If Katich remained completely unrepentent about such an act, it would be pretty difficult to captain him in that situation.

I think anywhere that it’s played you aren’t going to have many, if any, fans travelling from overseas. Crowds will all be local. One advantage of somewhere like Australia is we already have plenty of people from all these different countries living here to support their teams. But surely better to have a tournament where you can at least have those local fans in seats, than have then played in empty stadiums.

They might not you know. India might realise that the absolute best they can hope for is playing the tournament in empty stadiums this year, while if they swap with Australia and delay it a year then there becomes the chance they could actually have crowds back by then. Surely that would be better for them than stubbornly trying to hold onto this years tournament.

Plus, there’s always a chance that in 2022 India may be able to host an event with crowds. There’s zero chance of that in 2021. If they did manage to host a tournament it would still be in a tight bubble played in empty stadiums. Surely swapping with Australia is better for everyone.

Especially considering that even if they somehow managed to hold it in India in 2021, they would be playing to empty stadiums. Not sure how that really benefits BCCI financially. If it’s empty stadiums and therefore only a TV product, what benefit do they really gain from having it in India?

I get what people are saying about the BCCI, but I think these things are probably over stated. Even if they were able to have it in India, it would be played in empty stadiums. Not sure how playing games in empty stadiums in India helps the BCCI financially compared to just showing it on TV while played in another country.

With how things are going in India at the moment, I don’t see any possible way that they can hold the tournament in India. It’s got so bad in India that it’s going to take a long time to turn things around. I can’t see any way they are going to be all good in 5-6 months time. Simple call to just swap the tournaments, move Australia to 2021 and push India back to 2022.

Definitely. Even if they manage to continue the IPL to it’s conclusion, it’s one thing that some players might decide since they are already there they may as well see it through and quite another flying in lots of national teams into a place with such massive pandemic issues. I can’t see any possible way that it can go ahead. With how bad things have got, it’s going to take a long time to turn it around. It’s a lot harder to enforce a strict lockdown in a nation like that where they can’t just provide everyone who is unable to work with government support like Australia was able to do.

Althought they ran the IPL in the UAE last year, and since they are playing to empty stadiums you’ve got to think that it would make little difference where it’s physically played since it’s purely a TV product now.

They basically decided to bring the IPL back to India because of arrogant and naive proclamations by their politicians that they’d basically beaten the virus and such, rather than any sort of reality. But the situation has also dramatically worsened during the IPL. It didn’t seem anywhere near this bad when they started it. So it becomes a difficult thing I guess to know what to do at this point since they are already going. For the local players, the safest place they can be is remaining in the IPL bubbles. If they cancelled the tournament and ended the bubble so all local players just went back into the general population that would put those players all at much more risk. Players from countries like Australia and NZ, of course, the risk does down dramatically if they left the IPL bubble because the places they would return to are largely COVID-free.

Sure, there have been fast bowlers who’s careers have ended in their early 30’s but plenty of others who’ve gone well into the mid-30’s or even later. But the point being if age is the issue then it generally results in either frequent injuries or pace starts to drop off or things like that. But those don’t appear to be the issue at all. So no reason age should be anything to do with it for him.

Exactly. If they need to do this team song before people can leave then do it early on and then those who want to stay drinking in the change rooms still can, while those with reasons to leave can do that to. Players on these teams spend very large amounts of time with each other as it is. Forcing people to hang around in that scenario when have other things they’d rather be doing isn’t good for anything. Katich was basically just a bully, and he shouldn’t be made into a hero for it.

Hardly. It’s absurd that people complain about shield matches always coinciding with tests so the test players never play, then complaining when the Shield matches don’t coincide with the tests. It’s absurd to think that if Shield matches did keep going all through the test series that somehow a player who’s been in bad enough form to get dropped during the test series should really be able to find such good form, so quickly, in the Shield matches that he can get back into the test team before the end of that same test series. It’s absurd that people can’t get over themselves and realise that T20 cricket is here to stay and that it’s not some great evil destroying the game.

Except it wasn’t anything like that. Prior to WSC, the players were paid an absolute pittance. Apparently Packer initially approached CA about simply bringing cricket to commercial TV and trying to make it into a better commercial product, but the smug administrators showed him the door, so he decided to create his own league. And it was actually fairly easy to get players to come across, because they were basically being exploited by their respective boards at the time, playing in front of big crowds but with nothing to show for it financially themselves.

WSC was simply the thing that brought cricket into the professional era where players were actually able to start earning some decent money out of playing the game. When the administrators finally realised they had completely misread the situation and stuffed up dramatically they went into negotiations with Packer and it all came back together.

In this case, footballers are already fully professional and earning bucketloads, and these clubs are already the richest clubs in the world, but they just saw a way to change things such that more and more money got concentrated into fewer and fewer clubs.

It’s not even remotely the same.

T20 cricket has actually been great for the game. Prior to T20 coming along, domestic cricketers could hope to make enough to just get by without needing a part time job if they were lucky. There were around 15 players in the country who were legitimately making good money out of cricket. Now, sure, things like the IPL Auction mean that a few players make ridiculous money compared to other team mates, but overall, you have a LOT more players able to make a really good living out of cricket now than ever before. Which can only be a positive for the game and encourage more kids to consider cricket as a serious pursuit.

Sorry, but it’s never going to happen. I can’t imagine anything is really going to make significant difference to crowds at these domestic matches. The days when big crowds turned up to such things was before we had lots of sport on TV and could watch international matches from all over the place. In those days, if you didn’t go to watch Shield matches, the only cricket you would see would be one test match a year, if that. The modern environment is completely different.

Not really sure what you are getting at Rowdy. 1. Clarke wasn’t captain at the time, it was when he was still reasonably young, and 2. It was supposedly hours after the game finished.

Starc is certainly a worry. He has had the worst summer of his career this summer by a long shot. Hopefully he can make good use of the off season to find his way back to his best for next summer, otherwise he could well be gone. But he’s still only 31, and his issues are technical, not physical, so hopefully a good off season working with some bowling coaches can see him come back better than ever.

Henriques is one player I think could potentially slip in there. He isn’t one who’s been tried and failed. He really hasn’t had much of a go at international level until the Indian matches at the start of this summer, and he did well in those. I suspect he will be well and truly in the mix there. But probably doesn’t have enough T20 international experience to be able to properly rate him here.

I think Smith is probably better than you give him credit for. But he’s definitely better in the 50 over format than T20 as he can take 20-30 balls to get himself in before going ballistic. In T20 that needs to be more 5-10 balls max.

I’ve never got that. The idea that resorting to violence because your team mate doesn’t want to spend the whole night getting drunk in the change rooms turns you into some sort of folk hero just shows much that is wrong with Aussie blokey culture!

I’ve never got people siding with Katich on that. The idea that a player not wanting to spend the whole night getting drunk in the change rooms is somehow a worse sin than grabbing a team mate by the throat shows there is a lot wrong with Australian blokey culture! It’s not like he was hurrying out the door. Supposedly this was already hours after the game had finished. Yet somehow resorting to violence because your teammate doesn’t want to spend the whole night getting pissed in the change rooms somehow makes you a hero in some parts of Aussie culture.

Definitely hope so. If he’s really this good, not just having an all-time career purple patch that won’t last, then he could well do a very good job for Australia.

(Though, technically next season won’t be a sophomore season as this season wasn’t his rookie season, just his break-out season!) 🙂

Don’t know how much of a plan B. Pat is one of those sorts of bowlers who is just always the first one picked. After the big gap between his first and second tests, the ONLY tests he hasn’t played in were the two tests in the UAE against Pakistan right after the infamous South African tour. He’s played every single other test in that time. So I don’t know that we’d necessarily need any more of a Plan B than with anyone else.

I think it’s probably going to be Cummins or Head. If it’s Cummins it will be interesting to see if that remains long term. It will probably mean that he will need to play less T20’s and ODI’s.

Certainly looks a bit like it, but so far it’s really only been one summer. Let’s see how he backs it up next year. Inglis first ever first class hundred was this summer, and he followed it with more. But plenty of players have had one awesome season and then dropped away. In many ways it’s that next season that is where we really get to see if they are actually that good or just had a purple patch for a season. (Not saying he isn’t that good. I think there’s every chance he is, but we still want that second season to back it and and show that’s the case!)

Definitely Paine’s longevity has a lot to do with it. With the current state of the team I think CA probably think the longer the better to give other options more time to emerge. I’m convinced that when they first selected Head it was with view of him becoming the next test captain if only he could establish himself in the test team by the time Paine goes.

Paine is 36 now, will turn 37 during the test series next summer. But it’s hard to just go on pure age. There are so many things that play into when players are ready to retire. Clarke retired at age 34, largely based on his degenerative back injury. Alistair Cook retired at 33, but he’d played 161 tests by that age. On the other hand Misbah-Ul-Haq played to age 42 and was still going pretty well at that point.

I’ve heard suggestions that Paine missing so much cricket through injury during the middle of his career may well be something that helps him to then have a bit more longevity at the end. We will see. It’s quite possible Paine will be done at the end of next summer, but it’s just as possible he could play on until he’s almost 40. Especially since he only plays test cricket, he’s not a multi-format player.

Cummins is VC.

Smith is certainly the type to wear his emotions on his sleave a bit, rather than the stoic, poker face type captain. Being able to stay calm and be hard to read can certainly be a helpful thing as captain, but certainly isn’t a necessity. Clarke was the sort of captain who was always thinking, always seemed to have a plan b, c, and d and wouldn’t just let the game drift. Smith could have done with a bit of that, as could Paine.