What a joke the cricket schedule is this summer. You would think that they are trying to make it easy for the Pom's to retain the ashes. I heard Kim Hughes ranting about it on ABC this afternoon and he is spot on. It seems to me that the whole season revolves around the Big Bash which has now evolved into a 2 month long tournament during which time there will be no other domestic cricket.
They have organised the rest of the season around the 20 over competition. The Ryobi cup will be done and dusted by the end of October, Sydney is the only venue you will see 50 over domestic cricket this summer. Then they have crammed in 6 Sheffield Shield games in just over a month with players criss crossing the country between games. After this glut of matches the first class schedule goes into a 2 month break to resume in mid February.
So there is no opportunity for Australian players after early December to either push their claims for the ashes series or regain form if they get dropped from the first couple of tests. During this period a domestic cricketer will be either playing numerous 20/20's or grade cricket neither of which is an ideal environment to push test credentials.
I could go on but I think this fixturing farce indicates that Cricket Australia has now dropped the pretence of having the interests of the game and the players as its primary concern and is now exposed as a revenue raising slave of the TV networks.
However CA may eventually kill the goose that laid the golden egg because unless the Australian test team shows signs of improvement this summer ( and things may get ugly if England win the first test convincingly), people will start voting with their feet and will not turn up if the Aussies are getting flogged.
In the long term, if this 20/20 stuff continues to dominate the cricket summer in Australia, I really wonder where the game will be in 10 years and whether test cricket will be reduced to a mere sideshow. If that happens, I certainly won't be interested, might end up going to the Wildcats or Glory.
I think they need to restrict the Big Bash to a month over the christmas period and still have a few first class games during that time for the players who are not involved. Not holding my breath though
