Old format gave scg and MCG Relevance
Adam Collins discusses the advantages of reverting to Australia’s traditional Test dates in its two big sporting cities
Another Melbourne Ashes battle, another dead rubber. The only Test match in the fouryear cycle anywhere in the world that can entice up to 95,000 or more rugged individuals through the gates, yet it is routinely played in a series that has already been resolved. Same old, same old.
Sure, the state of the current clash won’t materially diminish the attendance. This is Melbourne. They (we) show up every time as a point of pride. After all, there is a tag to uphold as the sporting capital of the world, underpinned by the biggest attendances in all the land.
Even so, we are missing a trick. No, not by moving it away from Boxing Day – let’s not say things we can’t take back. Rather, the key is adjusting the summer’s calendar in a more wholesale way to make sure that when the carnival comes to Melbourne and Sydney that the Ashes (and other series) are, by design, still alive.
The Sydney Test might not draw the same numbers as Melbourne – a smaller ground in a city with less of an appetite for live sport more generally. But it is an icon all the same, in Australia’s most populated city.
Indeed, its status as the New Year’s Test is as locked into the calendar as Melbourne the day after Christmas. What both have in common is that they don’t get the Ashes-defining moments anymore.
It is alarming that by the end of the SCG contest in a couple of weeks’ time, a dozen Ashes Tests will have been played in the two venues since the end of 1994-95 with just the one that had the ability to influence the destination of the urn. And that, too, was all over before the hangovers had lifted on Boxing Day in 2010.
Instead, since the recalibration of the Australian cricketing summers 20 years ago, Sydney has become the ground of coronations, indulgence and retirement laps. Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Justin Langer’s farewell. Mark Taylor’s last hurrah. Then outside of Ashes summers, Steve Waugh and Mike Hussey, too. Or for Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke, the scene of their 5-0 revenge as they stampeded long-since demoralised opposition.
Originally, the rationale for knocking over all of the Tests by the first week of January was to allow for limited-overs cricket to be played in one stretch rather than breaking it up across a few months. These were the glory days of World Series Cups where two teams would visit and massive crowds were the norm.
Now, the 50-over game is still well watched, but on television rather than at the game.
With this in mind, there is a lot to gain and little to lose by shuffling the white and red ball around from their current homes. Of course, that would enable Melbourne and Sydney to return to the middle of the series where every ball matters. But there is a lot going for it than that alone.
The knock-on effect, assuming the Gabba would continue to self-select as the Ashes-opener given Australia’s success at the venue, is that Adelaide could be slotted back to Australia Day (26 January) where it once thrived. As the day-night Test home, a spot in deeper summer would also mean chilly November nights – a defining quality of the first three pink-ball Tests at the ground – would be a thing of a past.
It isn’t just about the Test matches, either. Putting the ODIs up front would elevate their status as an hors-d’oeuvre rather than an afterthought. Granted, it is a long time since the sides that turned out for the two forms of the game were identical. But the best players find their way into both XIs more often than not.
Imagine, in this instance, that England had five ODIs to get a better handle of how Steve Smith goes about his work? Remember, this is precisely what Kevin Pietersen did in 2005 when learning how to combat the Australian bowlers. Through that stretch, Jason Gillespie was shown a much lesser force that could be taken down and Simon Jones a potential giant-killer. The rest made history. No one ever complained that the urn was resolved in September rather than August.
Then there is the Big Bash League. Nothing has revolutionised the Australian summer quite like it since moving to free-to-air television five years ago. It already has a profound place in the local cricket diet, in the flesh and on TV. Yet when the ODIs start, some of the biggest BBL stars can quickly vanish from the stage.
Take Chris Lynn. There is no greater must-see than the Brisbane Heat hero when he indulges in a little bit of Lynnsanity. But then, halfway through last season, he got a call-up to the ODI squad. Wonderful recognition, no doubt, but why did it have to be at the expense of what he was doing in the shortest form?
If it were Test cricket, and not ODIs, marrying up with the BBL then this problem would be significantly reduced. It would mean the wonderful red-ball-to-white all-day marathons that occur from Test to BBL could continue all the way through to the end of January. It would be left untouched by ODI fare altogether, which in this scenario would be completed by the end of November, well before the BBL window. Et voila.
The best time to fix the roof is when the sun is shining, and when it comes to Test cricket in Australia, it shines brightly right now. But to assume it will always be so is negligent. The scheduling conversation is one worth taking seriously to give our game – and all its formats – the best chance to co-exist. Time to get it started.
Since the recalibration of the summer, Sydney has become the ground of coronations, indulgence and retirement laps