Former Test captain Mark Taylor has called on Cricket Australia to scrap the Sheffield Shield final, saying the game has lost its lustre.
As Usman Khawaja prepared to test his fitness on Friday before his expected selection in Queensland’s squad for the decider against South Australia in Adelaide – amid a bubbling dispute with Queensland Cricket’s high-performance chief Joe Dawes – the future of the fixture, itself, was questioned by Taylor.
Marnus Labuschagne celebrating Queensland’s 2020/21 Shield title.Credit: Getty Images
Once viewed as the unofficial sixth Test of the summer, the final is coming off second-best in clashes with the behemoths of world cricket and Australian sport – the Indian Premier League and AFL respectively – robbing it of star power and access to premier venues.
“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’, I think that would be a very sensible thing,” Taylor told this masthead.
His comments come a week out from this year’s final between South Australia and Queensland, both of which will be missing key players. Test star Travis Head and left-arm paceman Spencer Johnson are unavailable for South Australia’s tilt at a first Shield title in 29 years, while Queensland will be without important seamer Xavier Bartlett.
Both internationals, along with other national- and state-contracted players with IPL deals, were granted No Objection Certificates by CA, permitting them to travel to India for the tournament, starting this weekend.
CA, which, like other national boards, gets a cut of the value of their players’ IPL deals, does not ordinarily prevent players from taking part in the lucrative league outside of injury. CA was contacted for comment.
This year’s Shield final will be held at Karen Rolton Oval after the AFL blocked a bid by CA for the match to be played at the spiritual home of SA cricket, Adelaide Oval. The AFL has rights to the iconic ground from March 15.
Taylor – who played in two winning Shield teams for NSW, including one as captain – was on the CA board when former chair Wally Edwards called for the final to be scrapped in 2015 in one of his final remarks before stepping down.
Former Australian captain Mark Taylor.Credit: Getty Images
The Shield final, played over five days at the home venue of the top-ranked team, was introduced for the 1982-83 season.
“It’s something the players used to fight for,” Taylor said. “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.”
World cricket has granted a window for the IPL but the league’s recent expansion by a further two weeks into March makes a clash with the Shield final almost unavoidable. If NSW had made the final, Test quicks Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood would all have been unavailable.
The political economy of world cricket means the Shield final will never win out against the IPL.
“If you don’t offer NOCs you’re going to get India off side and probably some of the players off side,” Taylor said. “It’s not an easy maze to work through.”
Khawaja, 38, remained silent on Thursday following Dawes’ extraordinary criticism of the Test opener. But QC deputy chair Ian Healy took another stab at the issues he perceived to be at play in an era when players have gained far more authority to opt out of matches.
“What we shouldn’t forget is when Usman makes a team and in a game he is 100 per cent in,” Healy said on his SEN radio show. “When he gets into the environment, he is fine. It’s just this pick-and-choose mentality that has been evident in his later years that Queensland haven’t been happy with.”
Both Khawaja and Head have given up their respective state captaincy roles in the past year in order to have more freedom to rest from state commitments: Khawaja to manage his body in the face of his advancing cricketing years, and Head to play more franchise cricket among multi-format duties for Australia.
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