Cricket Australia (CA) has been given assurances that the Pakistan players in the BBL will play the entire competition despite a scheduled T20I tour of Sri Lanka in January, while CA has sent a party to Pakistan to finalise plans for Australia’s T20I tour there prior to the T20 World Cup. CA chief executive Todd Greenberg also confirmed that Mackay and Darwin will host Tests against Bangladesh in Australia’s winter with the dates to be announced in January.There had been a concern that the group of Pakistan players playing in the BBL, including Babar Azam, Shaheen Shah Afridi, Mohammad Rizwan, Shadab Khan, Haris Rauf and Hasan Ali, might be withdrawn to play in a brief T20I series in Sri Lanka in early January that the PCB recently announced.But Greenberg, who held a wide-ranging chat with a group of reporters on the morning of the third Ashes Test at Adelaide Oval, said he was confident the players would remain in the BBL. “We’ve been told that if they’ve been signed by the BBL, they’ll play [the whole BBL],” Greenberg said.Dates for Australia’s T20I tour of Pakistan ahead of the T20 World Cup have yet to be announced but Greenberg said that it was going ahead, with CA and the Australian Cricketers’ Association sending delegates to the country for a pre-tour security check.”We’ve just sent a couple of people to Pakistan to do a pre-tour for the T20I games in February,” he said. “We’re going to have some conversations with the players after the [Ashes] series and explain to them how that will work with security. But I went there with them in 2022 and it was an amazing experience.”The three-match ODI portion of that tour, which is part of the FTP, will be moved to June after the PSL and the IPL have been completed. That will tie in with three ODIs and three T20Is in Bangladesh in the same month.
Bangladesh’s visit to Australia later in the year during August will see a return of Test cricket to the Top End for the first time since 2004 with Mackay hosting its first Test match.
Meanwhile, CA remains committed to playing at least one pink-ball Test per year until 2031. Greenberg said the success of it as a broadcast product and as an in-stadium experience for fans means it will remain in place despite some recent questions around the need for it.
“I’ve just reviewed the numbers from the Gabba, the pink-ball Test was unbelievable,” Greenberg said. “The night session, particularly, has double the number of viewers that we would get from the last session here today. There’s no doubt that it’s a successful opportunity for cricket. It gets more people watching and more people engaged in it.
“It’s in our broadcast contracts until 2031 that we will play a pink-ball Test. So it’s not going anywhere. There’s not going to be more of it, I’m not going to be playing five of them over summer. But it has real benefits. I understand that there’ll be people who’ll be critical of it, and I’m not asking for everyone to love it. But this is the evolution of Test cricket.”
