Australia will have to get used to hosting October cricket World Cups, as global forces conspire to make it unlikely that the traditional February-March tournament window will ever be used again.
There may be some disbelief from spectators who have sat through three matches washed out entirely, one stopped short of a result and another truncated by rain, that October/November has already been slated for the 2028 men’s Twenty20 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.
MCG curator Matt Page confers with umpires at the MCG on Friday night.Credit:Getty Images
But the fact of the matter is that the slot previously used for events additional to the regular international season is now arguably the most hotly contested patch of turf on the annual calendar.
As far back as 1985 and the ODI “World Championship of Cricket” hosted to mark the 150th anniversary of European settlement in Victoria, global tournaments in Australia have tended to be played at the back end of the season.
The reasons for this related primarily to a desire to still schedule, and play, a full, regular international season beforehand, as was the case in 1985 and each of the 1992 and 2015 50-over World Cups co-hosted with New Zealand.
Those bilateral matches are the lifeblood of Australian cricket, since they form the basis of the broadcast rights deals and traditional match attendances that administrators rely upon to fund the game. A World Cup anywhere between November and early February would scramble spreadsheets.
Nevertheless, there has been a view among decision-makers as well as spectators that February and March is much the better time to put on a big event. By that stage cricket has already dominated the summer conversation for three months, grounds are dry and pitches firm.
That’s why CA and the local organising committee elected in 2016 to put the women’s T20 World Cup in that spot for 2020, the first time it had been held as a standalone tournament.
“Women’s cricket is undoubtedly gaining in popularity around the globe and we felt that by separating the two events we could accelerate that growth,” CA’s then chair David Peever said at the time.
“Having the ICC Women’s World Twenty20 as a stand-alone event means we can hold it in stadiums that we can fill, put on TV at prime-time and ensure it has the space to be promoted as the main event, away from the shadow of the men’s game.”
Held in the final weeks before COVID-19 swept the world, it will always be remembered for the 86,174 spectators who flooded into the MCG to see Australia triumph, an outcome that put the women’s game in front of more people than ever before, and transcended financial returns. Trying the same thing in early November would have been far difficult.
Katy Perry with the triumphant Australian team after they won the T20 World Cup final at the MCG.Credit:Getty Images
At the same time, even the hosting of the 2015 men’s World Cup in February and March had been somewhat problematic, as the ICC and international boards contended with the creeping expansion of the window for the Indian Premier League.
Not only is February and March part of the cricket season for Australia, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Africa and New Zealand, it is also the only direction into which the IPL can realistically expand, as it will, now it has two more teams and a massive new broadcast deal.
To play the IPL deeper into June, July and August would plonk it squarely in India’s annual monsoon season, a scheduling scenario bound to cause still more anxiety for cricket’s global power than the sight of a soggy and washed out MCG in October.
That thinking has been hammered home to the rest of the world by successive leaders at the BCCI, from N Srinivasan and Anurag Thakur, to Sourav Ganguly and now by Jay Shah, who, as the board’s secretary but also its ICC board representative, has as much power as any administrator in the game’s history.
And in return for that understanding, India will continue to be a generous tourist to help fund the bilateral broadcast deals that Australia and England, in particular, rely upon to maintain their financial health, and also avoid the nuclear option of a massively expanded IPL that would cannibalise the entire southern season in the fashion of Major League Baseball.
As such, it was no surprise when, last year, CA and New Zealand Cricket jointly nominated October/November as their chosen window for the 2028 event, part of a suite of tournaments confirmed by the ICC.
While the current Future Tours Program only runs to 2027, the aforementioned factors are not going anywhere and will only get more acute. So, it might be worth making a note to pack the umbrella, jacket and scarf for Australia/New Zealand 2028.
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