Aussies happy to help

National squad will split to boost coffers of battling Kiwis, South Africa

AUSTRALIA has committed to being in two places at once in February, as Justin Langer’s outfit goes above and beyond to rescue cricket’s battlers from financial ruin.

Cricket Australia could have two teams playing simultaneously on opposite sides of the globe, with Tim Paine’s Test team due to travel to South Africa at the same time as Aaron Finch takes a whiteball side to New Zealand.

South African cricket is in crisis, both with COVID-19 and the state of its board, and there is doubt over the scheduled three-Test tour going ahead, although Australia want it to. But even if South Africa do pull it off, it’s understood Cricket Australia has told New Zealand it would still send a white-ball side across the Tasman as well.

The Kiwis are so desperate for cricketing content to help fill its coffers they would even take what would effectively be an Australia A team.

Despite the fact it’s still fighting through its own scheduling dramas for this summer, Cricket Australia interim boss Nick Hockley says it’s the nation’s duty, as a powerful cricketing nation, to help its rivals recover.

“Sport around the globe has been heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and it is incumbent upon all of us to play our part in helping international cricket back to a healthy position,” he said.

“Hosting this series is of vital importance to NZC and we stand ready to assist them, as we did the ECB with the recent white-ball series in England.

“Every board will have to make compromises and sacrifices to help the international game recover from the impacts of COVID-19 and we are happy to do our bit.

“This is a unique set of circumstances brought on by the pandemic and is not something we envisage replicating regularly in future .”

New Zealand released a schedule yesterday which has Australia playing five Twenty20 matches in NZ from February22.

The International Future Tours Program has Australia in South Africa for three Test matches between February and March.

Separating two teams to play at the same time has happened before.

When Australia toured South Africa for Tests in the ball-tampering series, a party of Test players went to Africa to prepare, while select whiteball stars helped spearhead a below-strength Australian T 20 team in New Zealand.