Knox: Cricket’s big test? Getting Australians to care about the game
By Malcolm Knox
For the world’s best-concealed big international sporting event, it’s hard to go past LIV Golf. I’m a golf nut and would watch any contest – even Australian cricketers playing golf in anticipation of one of them impaling himself on his six iron – but LIV seems to slip by unnoticed. Apparently Brooks Koepka won recently, on an obscure streaming service in a galaxy far, far away …
A cricket World Cup is being staged on Australian soil, and so far it has travelled under an assumed name, sneaking through airports without detection. The start to the Twenty20 event, a collection of qualifying matches, World Cup-but-not-World Cup, has been low key to say the least. Call it a soft opening. But sheez, as the big games begin this weekend, the real games – Australia versus New Zealand in Sydney and Pakistan versus India in Melbourne – it feels like there is something at stake right now for the place cricket holds in the Australian sporting imagination.
READ MALCOLM KNOX’S FULL COLUMN HERE
Aaron Finch and Trent Boult will go head-to-head tonight. Credit:Getty, Wolter Peeters
Who will prevail? Australia or New Zealand
Hello and welcome
By Tom Decent
Good evening cricket fans.
Welcome to our live coverage of Australia’s first match at the T20 World Cup against New Zealand.
It’s Tom Decent here in the Herald/Age blogging chair at the Sydney Cricket Ground.
I’m joined by Malcolm Conn and Dan Brettig, who are both very much looking forward to this clash with the Kiwis.
Ball one is at 6pm AEDT.
