Crammed Test cricket schedule risks leaving Australian summers unrecognisable | Geoff Lemon
This has long been on the way, and here it is.Test season, the centrepiece of Australia’s summer, will next time around consist of four matches played over four weekends, not starting until the second week of December and done a week into January.Cricket Australia will instead claim to have expanded the schedule to seven Tests, but their tropical excursion against Bangladesh is in August, and the pink-ball sideshow masquerading as the 150th anniversary Test will have half its overs in March darkness.Both are distant islands to the summer mainland.Unlike most cricket countries, Tests are still Australia’s most substantial earner and site of interest.
Yet in a world of sports trying to claim more of the calendar, Australian administrators are in voluntary retreat.Even as recent decades have squeezed the format into shorter series, while tour matches are euthanised and preparation is eroded as an outdated luxury, there still has to be time within a series itself.Two matches could run back to back, maybe three, but any longer and there has to be space built into the tour, gaps of a week or 10 days to offset the physical demand.Those pauses also gave the audience time for breath; they let players rest and storylines compound.Much of the rhythm of cricket is in waiting.
That said, Test cricket every week of a holiday month will have its appeal to the average spectator.More is more.Various parties have spent some years arguing for universal four-day Test cricket on this basis: that shortening the span could see Tests run routinely from Thursday to Sunday in consecutive weeks, using a predictable schedule to draw viewers.But this proposal also envisaged using the technique in shorter bursts: adding a third match to two-Test affairs, or adding a second two-Test series rather than one series of three.Any longer than that, and the problem with a crammed schedule isn’t that punters won’t like it, but that players can’t do it.
If each match goes the distance when Australia host New Zealand at the end of this year, there will be players on the field for 20 days out of 31, plus four travel days and Christmas on the road.Inevitably, especially for bowlers, they will have to rotate out of the team.Not all 11 players can or will, though.Injury risk will increase, as will mental burnout.Even for batters, how much time can one spend in the field before it undermines performance?Given the work players do to be fit and ready, and the importance to them of every Test appearance, this is indefensible.
Take Mitchell Starc, passing up umpteen IPL seasons and the riches therein to keep his body right.The message to him and every other player is that their ambition is secondary at best, by administrators setting a schedule that is physically impossible for the players to complete.So far, this schedule is an anomaly, and Cricket Australia will claim force majeure via specific circumstances, in that New Zealand host India right before the Australia series, while Australia tour India right afterwards.Clearing the India tour before the 150th Test will be cited too.Really, though, it’s about the still-expanding Indian Premier League starting in March, and Test series against India becoming so lucrative that they have grown to five fixtures.
Accommodating both means starting Tests in January – and be assured that this Border-Gavaskar series will have its longer breaks built in, with plans at this stage for two of them, not compromising the fitness of players or the quality of play.No board here is a victim of circumstance.This is a squeeze that CA have been complicit in creating, and more of the same is on the way.This week the state associations and the federal body will hold a bumper two-day meeting to discuss selling tranches of the Big Bash League to foreign investors, with IPL conglomerates the most likely bidders.For months the messaging and positioning from the governing body has made a pretence of neutrality while positioning itself to encourage the sale.
The promise of vast sums will likely suck in any stragglers.Bear in mind that Cricket Australia remains a tax-exempt body set up to serve the public good, not a business tasked with seeking profit.Do any of those people believe that capitalist conglomerates will care about the development of future Australian players, or will accept Test duties keeping stars out of the league, or Test matches taking the prime Christmas holiday airtime while the Big Bash comes second? Cramming four Tests into four weeks unavoidably compromises the quality of the sport.But if cricket heads are turned by the promise of bags of cash, it will be the first in a very long list of compromises, ones that will leave Australian summers unrecognisable, and likely make Australian Test season a contradiction in terms.
Meningitis B vaccine scheme widened to include some year 11 pupils in Kent
The meningitis B vaccination programme will be expanded to include year 11 pupils at schools affected by the outbreak in Kent, health officials have said.Figures from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) show the number of cases of meningitis have fallen from 29 on Sunday, when 20 cases were confirmed and a further nine were under investigation, to 20 confirmed cases with a further three under investigation, as of 12.30pm on Monday.Officials started vaccinating University of Kent students on Wednesday 18 March. The following day, on a visit to the campus, the health secretary, Wes Streeting, said the programme would be expanded to more people, including sixth form pupils at four schools with known or suspected cases of MenB
Argos faces backlash over ‘influencer kit’ for toddlers
Argos has ignited a debate among parents and child development campaigners after promoting a wooden “influencer kit” aimed at toddlers.Critics have warned that the play set could normalise the precarious world of digital labour and prematurely expose children to the pressures of online visibility.The toy, designed for children aged two and over, is made entirely from wood and includes a tripod stand, a miniature camera with an adjustable aperture lens, a smartphone model, a tablet, and a microphone. All the items can be stored in a carrying pouch.Argos currently advertises the £15 product on its website as a tool designed to “cultivate children’s storytelling skills and creativity through career role-play”
UK medical council overhaul may mean more doctors struck off for racism and antisemitism
An overhaul of the General Medical Council is expected to lead to more doctors that face accusations of racism and antisemitism on social media being struck off.The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has launched a consultation on changes to the legislation governing the regulation of doctors, saying the move will lead to the biggest reform of the medical regulator, the GMC, in four decades.However, the line when it comes to the expression of anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian views is expected to be a continuing point of contention.Doctors facing disciplinary proceedings over wearing symbols and over social media posts have been bringing lawsuits against hospital trusts over the last year, arguing that their beliefs are protected under the Equality Act 2010.The DHSC says there have been “too many” recent examples of doctors using racist and antisemitic language, particularly on social media, without swift action
Property company denies trying to mass-evict tenants before England’s no-fault evictions ban
A property company accused of trying to mass-evict tenants in the weeks before no-fault evictions are banned has denied doing so, saying it is simply implementing “routine and lawful tenancy management”.A statement from Criterion Capital, set up by the billionaire property magnate Asif Aziz, was issued in response to Matthew Pennycook, the housing minister, who wrote to the company to seek “urgent” answers about its plans.Criterion has reportedly sent section 21 notices, which give notice of proposed eviction, to large numbers of its tenants. At prime minister’s questions this month, the Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh said she knew of at least 130 such notices issued by Criterion at just one development, Britannia Point, in her south London constituency of Mitcham and Morden.In a letter to the directors of Criterion, seen by the Guardian, Pennycook said that if the company was seeking to remove tenants before the Renters’ Rights Act comes into force on 1 May, banning so-called no-fault evictions in England, it would be the actions of a “thoroughly unscrupulous landlord”
No new meningitis cases linked to Kent outbreak found, health agency says
No new cases of meningitis linked to the outbreak in Kent have been detected, raising hopes that it has been well contained and has not led to people elsewhere catching the disease.The number of people affected remains at 29, of which 20 are are confirmed and nine probable cases in what health officials say is an “explosive” outbreak – the biggest to occur in the UK in a generation.Two of the 20 people confirmed with the disease have died: Juliette Kenny, 18, a secondary school student, and an unnamed University of Kent student. The other 18 are thought still to be in hospital.Nineteen of the 20 confirmed cases were of meningitis B
‘Not just a Jewish service’: Hatzola ambulances serve whole community, say volunteers
‘Accountants, plumbers, surveyors – whatever it might be, they’ve all got day jobs. Everyone has got kits in their car, everyone responds from wherever they are,” said Yossi Richman, on life as a trained volunteer paramedic at Hatzola, the ambulance service funded by Jewish giving.Richman also serves as a governance lead at Hatzola in Golders Green, north London, where four ambulances were attacked by arsonists in the early hours of Monday morning.The attack has left Jewish communities reeling. But alongside the concerns about community safety amid rising antisemitism, there’s a determination to protect the humanitarian civic principles Hatzola represents
Royal Mail owner pushes back against criticisms that service has declined
Crispin Odey: I can’t remember telling female employee ‘I could attack you now’
Baltimore sues Elon Musk’s AI company over Grok’s fake nude images
Protect men and boys from manosphere influencers, Labour MPs tell Ofcom
From the Pocket: Essendon have all the hallmarks of a team deep in rebuild – just not the stomach to acknowledge it
Crammed Test cricket schedule risks leaving Australian summers unrecognisable | Geoff Lemon