Realistically, how many of the test players are going to play the T20Is? The only batter who is a definite starter in both teams is Travis Head who is usually carefully managed and will probably be rested from the T20Is vs India. I can’t see Cummins, Starc and Hazlewood taking part in the T20I series.

The only other players who are serious contenders in both formats (at this stage) would be Josh Inglis and Cameron Green. I’d be surprised if both feature in both series.

I wonder if part of the thinking behind the scheduling is that the test players will be available for all the ODIs, then will get a break at home before going into camp for the first test.

I’d also be surprised if the Poms want a warm-up game. Warm-up games seem to be very rare these days, and plenty of teams have hit the ground running in recent years without them, including India this summer, Australia in their tour of Sri Lanka, and England in India and Pakistan last year.

To be fair, Jofra hasn’t exactly been in stellar form recently. Since the start of the English summer last year he’s averaged 30.9 at an economy rate of 9.22 in 9 T20Is and 42.3 at an economy rate of 6.2 in 10 ODIs – both way off any other extended period since his international debut, particularly with regards to economy rate.

Still, you’d back him to go for less than 70 in a 4 over spell in more balanced conditions.

Great article and really explores the issues with English cricket well.

I did take issue with one comment though:

The increase in popularity of soccer has had other impacts. Since its inception in 1991 the EPL has encompassed now a 10-month season, so unlike Australia where cricket is the summer national sport and the various football codes scrap over our allegiance during the winter months, cricket has a relatively narrow two-month window to capture the nation’s attention.

I’m not sure the two month window is so different to Australia where cricket is in the national focus for December and January for the home test summer and BBL, but is a marginal sport for most sports fans outside of this period, aside from away Ashes and World Cups.

I think the difference is just how ingrained into Australian sporting culture cricket is during that two-month window, due to some of those other factors you raise such as the presence on free-to-air TV. In fact, we even saw some good ratings for the tour of Sri Lanka and the previous WTC final due to being on free-to-air.

Cricket is the national “second sport” of most football fans here, whereas the same is not true in England where cricket as you say is a much more elitist sport. So sports fans right across society here connect more strongly with the cricket team during the off-season, perhaps helped by cricket being our biggest truly national sport, whereas football in England fulfils that function too.

Congratulations to India on achieving whatever the opposite of a win against the odds is.

I know India is going to continue getting favourable treatment from the ICC, but lets hope it is never again as extreme as this. Took any jeopardy and interest out of the tournament for non-Indian fans.

Seriously, do people have nothing better to do than get outraged over stuff like this? It was the most vanilla joke you could imagine.

I thought the funnier posts were the ones asking the Pope’s views on Crawley opening the batting or saying that “It puts us in our place, smooths out the rough edges of our narcissism, brings us back to reality, and makes us more humble and open to one another.” encapsulates the experience of an England fan during the Ashes down under.

That’s an entirely separate issue though. They’ve chosen to come in late for whatever reason, obviously they’ve decided that’s what suits their team best. They’re still entitled to expect that the bus which has been organised for them will show up.

Given the level of hospitality they’ve received in Napier, I don’t blame them for wanting to spend as little time on the ground as possible – perhaps they chose to come in late due to previous experiences over there?

The article says that Super Rugby Pacific booked the bus. The team is entitled to rely on the bus arriving if the tournament organisers have said they would book it.

Ultimately it seems that the bus had been booked and the bus company made the error? The main issue is that there should surely have been some contingency in place for the bus not showing up – i.e., an after hours contact for the bus company or even just grab a bunch of taxis and charge it back to the bus company.

Regarding flights, what’s wrong with booking a flight that arrives at midnight? Claiming this is an issue is just victim blaming. It’s perfectly normal for flights to arrive and depart at all times of the day. And they were coming from Fiji – it’s not like the Sydney to Melbourne route where you can pick a flight every half hour, there’s limited options. No matter what time your flight arrives, you should be able to expect that the bus that has been booked to pick you up will arrive.

It’s not like his coaching record with Pakistan was that bad even ignoring the chaos and undermining happening behind the scenes.

They lost his first test series to Bangladesh but then beat England who had wiped Pakistan 3-0 there just two years prior. That was already a significant improvement over Pakistan’s results in test cricket in recent years – having not won a single test match at home since 2021 prior to his tenure.

Then they won his only ODI series in charge, winning away to Australia for the first time since 2002, when Wasim, Waqar and Shoaib Akhtar were leading their attack. They did lose the T20I series but Australia is clearly a better T20 team than Pakistan.

There’s nothing in that record that screams “sack the coach”, it’s a very solid start to a coaching tenure.

Getting through to the semifinals with this bowling attack is a good result already.

I take it you are referring to this comment? I would have thought it was pretty clear I meant that they got through to the semifinal despite their bowling attack, not because of it.

Afghanistan may well have thought they were hard done by the rain, but they would have been incredibly delusional to hold that thought. Australia had scored at 8.5 rpo for the loss of one wicket for 12.5 overs. They needed to score at 4.4 rpo for the next 37.1 overs with 9 wickets in hand.

Australia was winning that game at least 9 times out of 10. They were already way ahead of the DLS par score for 20 overs, let alone 13. Rain prevented Afghanistan’s slim chance of a victory and Australia’s significant chance of a victory.

They won the game they needed to against England and were way ahead of the game against Afghanistan when the rain came – the rain saved Afghanistan not the other way around.

They performed well enough to qualify in the time they had on the field, that’s all you can do.

I feel like I’m missing something – where is the “BCCI conspiracy pile on” in here? Most comments I’ve seen on this issue are simply pointing out that the scheduling is ridiculous and massively favours India, which is objectively true. Tell me with a straight face that South Africa flying from Karachi to Dubai, only to fly back to Lahore 16 hours later without unpacking their bags isn’t ridiculous and completely avoidable (simply by moving the Dubai semifinal to Wednesday).

It’s completely fair to criticise the scheduling. Ultimately, that is the responsibility of the ICC, I don’t think the BCCI can be blamed for that. I think the whole situation has been mishandled and its very sad that cricket fans in Pakistan have had their tournament mangled like this to the point where they are likely to miss out on hosting not only India v Pakistan, but at least one semifinal and likely the final too.

You’re right, it’s not an ideal role for them but they both strike at 130+ in the BBL so they can score quick enough if needed.

I don’t think 250 will be enough with our bowling attack. We will need an above par score to compete – more like 270/280+.

Regardless, the best path for a good score for Australia is for them to attack the Powerplay and get ahead of the game before the ball gets softer and the spinners come into the game.

I don’t think McSweeney is the type of player needed for this strategy. He’d be a good backup for Marnus or Smith though.

That’s not that unusual in tournament play though if you don’t have a full round robin.

Australia won the 2015 World Cup without playing South Africa, Sri Lanka won the 1996 World Cup without playing South Africa (who topped the other group). It’s pretty much always the case in the Champions Trophy which is a very short tournament.

I would be tempted to put whoever comes in to the team as opener with a licence to tee off. The middle order is working well so I’d be loathed to change that up, especially as you need good players of spin in that middle order.

Either Connolly or Hardie I think could do that role if required. If they come off, its a bonus – if not then a well functioning and in-form middle order is still there as insurance. I don’t think we can play JFM mainly because we need to replace Short’s bowling too (leaving aside his poor form).

McSweeney is a good match in terms of bowling contribution but we don’t need another accumulator with Smith and Marnus already in the side. Especially in Dubai having someone who can score quickly in the Powerplay is more important to try and get ahead of the game before the spinners come on.

I’m not sure what you’re talking about there. Matt Short’s strike rate in the first 10 overs in ODI cricket is 111 and its been 116 this tournament. In what world is that wasting the Powerplay?

Fraser-McGurk is striking at 132, but he’s only averaging 14 in the Powerplay, so his average innings is 14 off 11 balls. Short’s is 26 off 23 balls. In what world is 14 off 11 a more valuable innings than 26 off 23 in ODI cricket?

You make it sound like Short is a Geoff Marsh-like batter. Short’s main issues lie from being too much of a hitter like JFM, not that he’s too slow scoring.

Inglis was already in the team, so losing Matt Short doesn’t mean you gain Inglis – Inglis was playing regardless.

Short is either going to be replaced by Jake Fraser-McGurk (ODI average of 14 and 9.4 so far this season), Aaron Hardie (ODI average of 16.6 and 13.6 so far this season), or Cooper Connolly (ODI average of 10, all of his 10 runs have been scored this season).

Short has a poor ODI record so far, and I’m far from convinced by him if the pitch is doing anything, but he has at least averaged 41.5 at a 102 SR so far this tournament. And his bowling (8 overs for 28 runs in the tournament) has helped allow Australia to get away with only playing 4 frontline bowlers, deepening the batting.

Sure you could move Inglis up to open and arguably that strengthens the opening position, but you then have a big gap to fill at number 5 and the records of the available options for that slot are far from inspiring. Hence, losing Short is a net negative to Australia.

Hosting their first ICC tournament in nearly 30 years, Pakistan managed to play the grand total of one match at home.

India are rightly the heavy favourites for the semifinal, so that makes it imperative for Australia to take (calculated) risks to give themselves the best chance. It might make for a blow-out loss, but if they play it safe and India can stay in their comfort zone, they’ll win 9 times out of 10.

I’m very interested what Australia do with their attack. Losing Matt Short is a blow not only because he did a good job with the bat in the group games, but it complicates Australia’s fifth bowler strategy. I think they need to bring in either Connolly or Hardie to bolster the bowling options and I’d be throwing whoever comes in to open so we avoid reshuffling the middle order which is functioning well.

Tanveer Sangha is an option to come in and play two spinners, but the NZ pace attack did well against India. In particular having someone who can bowl bouncers to Shreyas Iyer in the middle overs could be important – he looked almost like a tailender against O’Rourke’s bouncers and could have been out 3-4 times to it before he actually succumbed. That might play in Spencer Johnson’s favour even though he’s struggled with his control over the first two games.

The odds are stacked so firmly in India’s favour that this is almost a free hit for Australia. Getting through to the semifinals with this bowling attack is a good result already. Hope they can at least go one further with a famous victory to allow Pakistan to host the final of their own tournament.

CA gave punishments that were way higher than what the ICC handed out.

When India is caught cheating (Sachin Tendulkar’s ball tampering) or performing racist acts (monkeygate), they threaten to boycott matches/series until they get their players off.

I keep seeing the claim from Indian fans that India had to travel all over the country in 2023 (their own country by the way!) but other teams could stay put in a few venues and therefore the current tournament schedule is fine.

It’s utter nonsense based on complete untruths. Yes India did play in 9 different venues in the 2023 World Cup. Apparently this gave them a significant disadvantage compared to Australia who played at (checks notes), 9 different venues. Pakistan didn’t play at a “couple of venues”, they played at 5 venues. Every other team played at between 5 and 9 different cities.

It’s hilarious hearing that Indian fans “don’t whine about these things”. First, because I’ve seen a lot of “whining” about previous tournament schedules like your comment here. Second, what do Indian fans have to complain about? Their team gets the red carpet rolled out for them in every single
tournament. That’s why their fans have to invent issues to complain about when attempting to justify their special treatment using whataboutery.

Just accept India gets a lot of advantages compared to other teams and move on. They’re still a very good team regardless of their special treatment.

I don’t disagree with most of what you say. My perception is that the conversation is mostly taking place outside of Australia with some reporting of it by Australian media. Then again I basically don’t consume any News Corp media so I may be missing some.

I think the reason it is being discussed now is that the Champions Trophy is such an unimportant tournament that there was basically no media attention on it prior to the tournament. Hence, many fans had no idea how badly it was scheduled until the tournament had started.

The “stunned” headline is quite ridiculous, then again I can see many casual cricket fans in this country being only vaguely aware of just how powerful India has become because they are not that interested/engaged in cricket governance issues or indeed anything to do with cricket that goes on beyond our shores.

Milked by who? I haven’t heard a single Australian player complain about it and indeed there’s been little complaint even from the Australian media – most of the commentators raising concerns about it are English, a neutral team in this scenario.

As you say, the fact is India have derived a big advantage from being based in Dubai. That’s not so much a problem – India are generally given favourable scheduling whatever the tournament these days and they’ve won one ICC event in the last 12 years.

What is ridiculous is making the Dubai semifinal on Tuesday, 40 hours after the placings are confirmed on Sunday night. Forcing one team to make two completely unnecessary flights from Pakistan to Dubai back to Pakistan.

The whole thing could have very easily been avoided by either pushing the two semifinals back a day (Wednesday and Thursday instead of Tuesday/Wednesday), which would still allow plenty of time even with an allowance for reserve days for a Sunday final, or simply swapping the Lahore and Dubai semifinals around so that the Lahore game is played on Tuesday and Dubai on Wednesday. That way no team would have been required to make a completely unnecessary return flight.

Yes, it’s a shorter trip than Sydney to Perth, but no team in Australia is being asked to travel from Sydney to Perth to Sydney without playing a game in Perth, completely wasting their time.

Huh? Western people including Australia criticise their own people, governments and institutions all the time. It’s one of the great privileges of living in a liberal democracy.

There’s nothing wrong or hypocritical with criticising the wrongdoings or shortcomings of others in a similar fashion.

Claiming that there is, is an argument used by those who don’t want attention drawn to their wrongdoing.