Brisbane no certainty for Test opener until 2032
Oliver Caffrey |
Brisbane is no guarantee to host the Test opener until 2032, just days after Mitchell Starc admitted Australia players wanted to start the summer at the Gabba.
Australia’s extraordinary collapse late on day one of the first Test has them on track to lose in Perth for the second-straight year.
Despite going on to recover and reclaim the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, Australia’s capitulation against India at Perth Stadium 12 months ago placed them under huge external pressure.
For the past three years Australia’s first Test has been in Perth after Western Australia missed out on international cricket during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The deal to start the summer in Perth will expire after the 2026-27 season, but Cricket Australia chairman Mike Baird has indicated the Test opener is likely to stay put in WA.
The appeal of Perth early in the season is it puts the match into prime-time in the eastern states when viewers are usually still working and at school.
This is the first time a men’s Ashes series in Australia has started away from the Gabba since 1982-83.
Prior to 2020, Brisbane had been the traditional, and feared, starting point for travelling teams to Australia for decades.
Australia didn’t lose a Gabba Test from 1988 to 2021, when India famously secured an upset 2-1 series win in 2020-21.
But with the Gabba facilities rapidly declining and the Queensland government taking years to decide on a new stadium for the 2032 Olympics, Perth swooped on hosting rights.
The Gabba will miss out on a Test altogether next summer for the first time in 50 years when New Zealand tours.
Reacting to Starc’s quip about how the players would like to start at the Gabba, if they had a choice, Queensland premier David Crisafulli proclaimed Brisbane would be hosting the first Test of the summer in 2032-33.
“It’s coming home. It’s coming back to where it belongs,” Crisafulli said in state parliament on Thursday.
But that deal was already announced in March, with that Test to likely be the first major non-Olympics event at the proposed Victoria Park stadium after it hosts the 2032 games.
Brisbane starting the summer is only locked in for 2032-33, with nothing guaranteed after that.
There is a serious possibility the Gabba has hosted a Test opener for the last time before it is knocked down.
Starc famously opened the 2021-22 Ashes by taking a wicket with the first ball of the series at the Gabba.
With Australia having not lost an Ashes Test at the Gabba since 1986, Starc was on Wednesday asked if they had lost an advantage by not starting the series in Brisbane.
“We’ll find out in a week, won’t we?” Starc said.
AAP
