With a new format in place, it is now possible for the team finishing bottom of the league stage to go on and win the tournament
Daniel Brettig21-Jun-2018Finish last and you can still win the cup? Not since Fitzroy did so in a truncated 1916 VFL season has Australian sport been confronted by the sort of “everybody’s in it” scenario thrown up by Cricket Australia’s newly unveiled domestic limited-overs tournament.At a time when the flatlining performance of the ODI team is under major scrutiny, CA’s head of cricket operations Peter Roach has revealed that a reluctance to reduce the number of games played by competing teams in a World Cup year was behind the decision to allow all six states to take part in the knockout matches of the tournament in September and October, irrespective of where they finished after the qualifying matches.Sheffield Shield dispenses with pink ball
There will be no day/night Sheffield Shield matches in 2018-19 for the first time in some years after the BCCI’s refusal to allow for the scheduling of a pink ball Test between Australia and India at Adelaide Oval in December.
As a result of this decision, all rounds of the Shield will be played in daylight, though the second half of the season, following the Big Bash League, will again use Dukes balls by way of affording players the chance to use a similar ball to the one used in England, with an Ashes tour of England looming in 2019. The Shield final has been retained despite a tighter schedule due to extra BBL matches.
“We commend CA for retaining the Sheffield Shield final,” said the ACA’s operations manager Brendan Drew. “For the players, the Sheffield Shield final is a key element of the Australian cricket summer, given it provides a high-pressure environment that compares to Test matches. Coming into a World Cup and Ashes year, a competitive schedule with finals is vital to prepare players for the tough international fixtures we will face.”
Drew was more critical of the fact that the women’s domestic league remains a brief, carnival-style event, put very much in the shade of the WBBL. “Female players have indicated strongly in recent years they would like to play more domestic cricket,” he said. “Moving forward, our schedule must provide further opportunities to play 50-over and longer-form cricket, which is seen as the pinnacle in the women’s game.”
The governing body heeded requests from state associations to remove the developmental CA XI from the tournament after three seasons, but in an effort to ensure all teams played at least as many games (six) as in previous editions, the knockouts were opened up to a system of third playing sixth and fourth versus fifth for the right to meet teams one and two in the semi-finals. It is a judgment that has caused plenty of furrowed brows around the cricket community over the past 24 hours.Roach told ESPNcricinfo that once the call had been made to dispense with the CA XI because the states argued that they were now providing better opportunities for younger players, there was a conundrum around how to ensure teams were not playing fewer matches as a result. Given the parlous state of Australia’s ODI team currently touring England, a significant reduction in the number of domestic 50-over games was not a welcome prospect.”We get back to every game being really strong and experienced state teams, much like the mantra around the world to create a great first-class competition is that you want fewer teams, and we fortunately have got six and the states wanted to get back to every game being a real quality contest,” Roach said. “The trade-off with that of course is that then to keep the same number of games; you either have an uneven spread of opposition or you double it – if you keep it the same you drop a game [for every team]. So that was where we were at and the discussion came that we don’t necessarily do that in a World Cup year, so how can we rectify that.”Equally there’s the importance of playing knockout games when you get to the big tournaments like a World Cup. You do have knockout games and plenty of them towards the end of a tournament where Australia has been very successful historically at winning those, we believe that playing knockout games of some number is worthwhile to get to the right outcome. We looked at the model we ended up coming up with, and while it is true that you can still win it from sixth, I think it’s fair to say that won’t be the priority for teams to try to finish sixth knowing they can win it.”If you finish one and two you get straight through to the semi-finals, you’d like to think that three versus six there’s a team that’s been pretty successful in those five games and finished third and a team that’s been unsuccessful finished sixth. So we still think there’s an advantage to finishing top two, and the gap between third and sixth will be a good advantage to try to finish third as well. Having five knockout games at the end of the tournament was seen as a real positive.”Responding to questions about the format raised by numerous significant figures – players and coaches contacted by ESPNcricinfo termed the concept “strange” and said it would make the tournament “irrelevant”, among kinder assessments – Roach said that CA, the state associations and the Australian Cricketers’ Association understood there would be opposition when they made the call. Unfavourable comparisons have been made with junior competitions, where participation is emphasised over performance.”I don’t think any of us were naive enough to think there wasn’t going to be discussion about it, we see and hear it every year in other competitions around the country that half or more than half of the teams get in the finals,” Roach said. “What we have here is a very short competition in comparison to the Sheffield Shield as a much longer competition.”What we do want to do is give our players the best opportunity to perform and put their name forward for higher honours, but equally we want to see the best team triumph in that tournament and have six really strong teams going hell for leather every game. On balance, the view is that not having the CA XI in there creates a more vigorous home-and-away competition and then the knockout games going through to the final makes those games all count. The trade-off is that the sixth team has a chance to win, they do take the long road, but potentially if they’re good enough they’ll win it.”Fourteen of the games are set to be broadcast by Fox Sports, CA’s new television rights partner, with the remainder streamed on the governing body’s website. Roach said that after five years of holding the domestic limited-overs tournament as a standalone event at the start of the season, there remained strong opposition to splitting games up between Sheffield Shield games on the basis that switching formats at that stage of the season is seen as highly likely to result in injuries for fast bowlers.”The commentary on mixing one-dayers throughout the four-day season is always there and at times like this people revert back to asking ‘why can’t we do it’,” Roach said. “The body of evidence is very strong that putting fast bowlers through changing formats of the game is not in their best interests and the feedback from state coaches is that having windows for competitions is a real priority in terms of best coaching players to improve, which is very similar to how we set up our international season in blocks of games.”We don’t play the first Test match then an ODI and back to a Test match. We are trying to replicate wherever possible what they get at the next stage and that’s proven beneficial in keeping our best players on the park and playing more often. We are committed to keeping it in a window, the best time of year to do that at the moment is at the front of the season, but continually we’re assessing the best place to play this tournament and the best mechanics to develop players from it.”More broadly, Roach acknowledged that the health of the Test team was a higher strategic priority than performances in ODI series outside of World Cups, as demonstrated by the way the 50-over tournament is played at the outer fringe of the season on smaller grounds, with as many Sheffield Shield matches as possible staged closer to summer at major venues. This contrasts with the way England have pushed the county competition to the edges of the season, with 50-overs cricket in a more central place.”It is a real balancing act to balance up the needs of all parts of the business,” Roach said. “Test cricket being a priority, we’ve prioritised the Shield landscape and we’ve maintained having a strong six-team Shield competition of 10 rounds and a final is the best way to produce good quality players for Australia. We still aim to win the World Cup, that’s a high priority for us and having this competition where it is, we believe is the best way for this year.”Does everyone believe that around the country? Clearly not and we wouldn’t expect them to, but all of our discussions and strategies are in place to lead towards this being the best outcome for us. That includes international cricket, Big Bash League, Australia A tours, they all form part of the picture of best preparing players for Australia, and best promoting our sport to the people of Australia.”A constant battle with any sport around the country is getting access to your best and biggest venues with competing priorities now and we need to balance where best to play our games when those venues are available. We see a bigger gap in terms of playing Shield cricket on our major venues where the Test matches are played and you take those to some of our minor venues around the country and you see a big difference in the pitches and facilities at those venues. We see less of a difference in terms of one-day cricket – I’m not saying there’s not a difference – but less of a difference. We also acknowledge playing in different conditions for one-day cricket is not a great detriment to the rounding of a player.”