As the debate about the future of cricket rages on it seems all is in the air

In Australia the game of cricket (the national game) has been thrown into a period of turbulence that precious few seem to know how to emerge from – most conspicuously, the game’s administrators. Much debate about the future of the game, if not the overwhelming majority, centres on the apparent demise of the 50-over game and the rise of T20, however amongst all this there is one factor that receives comparatively little attention. Here’s a clue – the same side always wins.

In the past many would’ve said that Australians are too one-eyed to grow tired of a winning team it, but not anymore. It simply can’t be ignored that a drop in interest towards cricket shown by the Australian public over the recent international summer was in inverse proportion to the performance of the Australian cricket team. At least when they’re playing on Australian shores, the more easily they win, the less we care. Quite simply, the game in this country has become a victim of the national teams’ success.

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2009-10 Australian Summer: What did we learn?

As Australia move seemingly unobstructed towards a resounding victory in their third and final test against Pakistan – and the final test of the summer – it is time to look back over the performance of Australia, Pakistan and the summer’s other participant, the West Indies, and evaluate how it all panned out. With Australia all but certain to clean up Pakistan’s remaining seven wickets tomorrow, the home side will finish their two test series with 5 wins from 6 matches. Going from such numbers, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it was all rather one-sided; however, this summer has not been a throw back to the days of Warne and McGrath. Sometimes the numbers don’t tell the whole story.

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The coming Australian international cricket season will see Australia play three tests against both West Indies and Pakistan in the crazily short time frame of just fewer than two months. That is, in just 54 days, Australian cricket administrators have scheduled 30 days of test cricket (assuming of course that all tests last 5 days). This back-to-back scheduling, which is grossly unfair on touring sides and is heavily influenced by a congested international cricket schedule, is a sign that test cricket, especially against lesser cricketing nations, is slowly being pushed to the side in favour of the shorter forms of the game.

The first test of the Australian summer, the Brisbane test, usually starts in the first week of November. However, this year it has been pushed back about three weeks, due largely to the scheduling of a meaningless seven match one-day series between India and Australia that didn’t finish until November 11.

It says a lot about the international cricket schedule when a test series is delayed by over two weeks due to a one-day tournament.

What is crazier still is that instead of using the delay to get in valuable practice matches, the West Indies chose to play just one four-day game against Queensland in the lead up. Such a lead-up game could be seen as adequate if they had recently just played a test series against a quality side, but alas, their last test series was in July. Against Bangladesh. And they lost two-zip!

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Shane Warne:

“End one-day internationals…. From now on, we should be playing Tests and Twenty20 internationals… Twenty20 is the entertainment and fun side of the game and also will bring in the big revenue.”

In his column in the Times on the 17^th of August, Shane Warne set out a six-point plan that he believes will improve international cricket (and to a lesser degree, county cricket in England). His second and most contentious point was the scrapping of one-day internationals (ODIs).

Warne himself states this is a ‘big call’, and rightly so. Firstly

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