“I don’t think it plays any real part in our season,” the chairman of Cricket Australia said of the Sheffield Shield final. “The Shield final over many years has proven itself to be a bit of a non-event, to be honest. There have only been three or four good Shield finals. The rest of them have been shockers, a bad advertisement for the game.”
The CEO added, “If you do have a look through history, the Shield finals have been absolutely dominated by the home team or a long draw … [It] has never been a great spectacle.”
NSW captain Rick McCosker with the Sheffield Shield trophy in 1983.Credit: Fairfax Media
These comments were reported in 2015 when the chairman was Wally Edwards and the CEO was James Sutherland.
At the time, Cricket Australia said the final would be “reviewed”, but its future was in doubt not just because the spectacle was so boring but because CA’s own Frankenstein’s monster, the Big Bash League, was devouring the middle of the Shield season. Expanding the BBL would push the Shield final further into the fringe, Sutherland said, until presumably it would fade away.
Ten years later, the Shield final might be the only professional sporting event surviving due to lack of interest. The reasons for scrapping it have grown and grown, but CA has lacked the energy to lift its finger to press the eject button.
South Australia host Queensland this week for the 2024/25 final. By “host”, this does not mean at the Adelaide Oval, which is an AFL venue. If the final had been in Queensland, Victoria, NSW or Western Australia, the host would likewise have relinquished its main venue to football because the Shield final is played in what is now the football season. This week’s final will be at Karen Rolton Oval, a suitably modest venue with a capacity of a few thousand that will not be filled.
Shield is no defence against the IPLCredit: Simon Letch
The Shield final has rarely been a competitive match. In its 43 stagings since it was conceived in 1982/83, it has been claimed by the away team six times. More than 10 times the final has resulted in draws that served as drug-free cures for insomnia. Most years, the result has been a crushing win for the home team against an opponent which, once it realises it can’t win, has given up the ghost. Waiting for it to end, even the players have been spotted watching football games on their phones.
Periodically, there are calls for the final to be euthanised. Mark Taylor told this masthead on Thursday, “To be totally honest, if CA was to turn around and say, ‘Let’s not worry about having a Shield final, and let’s just do it first past the post’ [as the Shield was decided for its first 90 years], I think that would be a very sensible thing.”
Since Edwards and Sutherland made their comments a decade ago but lacked the conviction to follow through (if a Shield final falls in a forest and nobody sees it, has it fallen?), the carcass of the poor old Shield has been eaten away by more predators.
The BBL has eaten out its middle, putting the Shield into abeyance through the summer holidays, and the Indian Premier League has eaten its butt-end. The IPL is the only event that takes absolute priority over all other world cricket. It begins this weekend and no international cricket will be played until it’s over on 26 May. With such a leviathan swallowing the game, the little old Shield final will not even touch the sides.
Cricket Australia lets players put the IPL first, permitting South Australia’s Travis Head and Queensland’s Spencer Johnson to miss the final so they can play for millions of dollars and spectators. Usman Khawaja has been in a heated stand-off with his own state over whether he is injured or doesn’t want to play. Khawaja has played in almost all of Queensland’s games this year, and should deserve the benefit of any doubt, but Queensland Cricket directors like Ian Healy and Joe Dawes have launched into the opener, insinuating that he doesn’t want to play.
The will of the players seems to be the only thread holding the final from the abyss. Taylor said, “It’s something the players used to fight for. I can remember the discussions from years gone by on, ‘Do we need the Shield final?’ Players were forthright on wanting to keep it because of the importance of it, because it was considered the next level below a Test match, but you wouldn’t say that’s the case today.”
There is, however, a consensus among players that the Shield final is one of their few opportunities to present their talents, in a five-day match, to the national selectors. It is the nearest thing domestic hopefuls have to a Test match, and based on recent years, it has been hard for the Shield as a whole to attract any of the selectors’ attention.
This is the real disease, and the status of the final is just the most obvious symptom. Australia has been letting the world’s best domestic cricket competition boil slowly like the frog in the pot. The Shield is not a financial success like the BBL, yet it is the bedrock upon which Australia’s showcase, Test cricket, is built.
Sam Konstas and the NSW Blues are used to plenty of blue seats when they play at the SCG.Credit: Getty Images
It has not been financially viable for decades, but its importance as the foundation of serious men’s cricket in Australia has never been questioned.
But this acceptance has looked more and more like lip service as the years go by. In cricket’s engine room, India, it’s hard to imagine that the Sheffield Shield is given the merest consideration. Like the AFL and NRL, the IPL has become a natural enemy and competitor to the Shield, and would happily see it wither. The question is whether Cricket Australia wants to stand by and let that happen, not through bad intent but simple neglect.
Bloody-minded defiance is in Australian cricket’s DNA, and maybe that’s the enduring reason to continue the Shield final: as a statement of independence. But that statement rings increasingly hollow if all ten rounds of the Shield, starting in spring, are not restored to their health as Australian cricket’s secret sauce and, for the players, the next best thing to representing their country. Save the final? Yes, no, whatever. The real challenge is to save the Shield.
