AUSTRALIA TO HOST SL IN MOMENTOUS HOME SUMMER
Sri Lanka, Pakistan and New Zealand will all tour Australia in the 2019-20 season as per the annual fixtures released by Cricket Australia (CA) yesterday. Meanwhile, the Australia Women’s Team will host Sri Lanka in late 2019, before India and England visit for a Tri-nation Series, in the build-up to the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2020 that takes place in February-march.
The fixtures constitute a big summer for Australian cricket, featuring the Women’s T20 World Cup – with the Men’s T20 World Cup set to take place later in the year – as well as the Men’s and Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL).
The WBBL is set to be played in its own, independent window for the first time.
A notable feature of the schedule, however, is that Australia Day, January 26, will not feature an
international match for the first time since 1994.
The Men’s home season begins in October 2019, shortly after the Ashes series concludes in England, when Sri Lanka visits for three Twenty20 Internationals.
That will be followed by a series against Pakistan in November, featuring three T20IS and two Tests, the second of which, at the Adelaide Oval, is scheduled to be a day/night affair.
New Zealand will then visit at the
end of the year, which will include the Boxing Day Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).
The match preceding that, the series opener, is also set to be held under floodlights, at Perth’s new stadium.
While the Women’s Tri-series gets underway at the end of the January, Men’s cricket at home will take a break as the BBL season takes over, until New Zealand return for three ODIS in March.
Australia Women will play the limited-overs series against Sri Lanka, featuring three T20IS and three ODIS, in September and October.
That will be followed by the TriSeries, before the Women’s T20 World Cup kicks off on 21 February.
The final for that tournament will be held on March 8, International Women’s Day, when a record crowd for a Women’s sporting event is expected to turn up at the MCG.
The Men’s event will take place later in the year, between October 18 and November 15.