Ashes 2021/22: Perth and Hobart set to be stripped of Australia v New Zealand ODI matches
The strength of the white ball series against New Zealand hangs on a big government decision. But, regardless, two Australian cities are set to be stripped of games.
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Perth and Hobart are set to be stripped of their 50-over games this month as the strength and shape of the New Zealand series hangs on a major Government call on Monday.
News Corp understands Cricket Australia are looking at shifting the white ball series against the Black Caps to east coast venues Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne to ease the logistical burden on players and broadcasters in the COVID-19 affected summer.
However, there are several balls still up in the air regarding New Zealand.
The shape of the series and the schedule should become clearer after a New Zealand Government cabinet meeting on Monday, which may announce when the country will remove mandatory quarantine measures.
Perth were scheduled to host the first ODI on January 30, as well as a preceding warm-up match for the Black Caps, but they’re all but certain to lose yet another international fixture due to Western Australia’s own iron clad border rules.
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Tasmanian officials are also privately expecting to lose the second ODI on February 2, with the third ODI down to be played in Sydney on February 5 - and a push on to move the Perth and Hobart matches to NSW, the ACT or Victoria.
“There is a lot of discussion going on about the one day series,” said Cricket Tasmania chief executive, Dominic Baker.
“At the moment it is scheduled to have nine games in nine cities over a couple of weeks. I think it would be fair to say that is going to be difficult to pull off.
“No decision has been made yet and look, to be really frank, we are just concentrating on the Test match at the moment.”
As it stands, New Zealand are sending a weakened team to Australia for the three ODIs and one T20 due to start on January 30 because they have a Test series against South Africa starting on February 17.
The only way Test all-format superstars like Kane Williamson will tour and boost the profile and competitiveness of the white ball games is if New Zealand announce an imminent reopening of the borders.
If quarantine remains in play until the end of February, as has been forecast, then New Zealand’s white ball squad may even look at ways of extending their stay in Australia – and possibly playing more matches to avoid being forced into isolation when they return.
Australian selectors will also have to look at resting their Test all-format stars during the ODIs against the Black Caps, given the heavy duty series coming up this year, starting with a Test tour of Pakistan in March.
Canberra is due to host the one-off T20 against New Zealand on February 8 – and a likely plan is that Cricket Australia will move the Perth and Hobart matches to those east coast venues to keep the logistics of the series as simple as possible.
Cricket Australia has done well to fulfil its Ashes schedule (albeit without Perth), but the feeling now is the priority should be to take the pressure off broadcasters and the teams and consolidate the fixtures rather than taking unnecessary flights around the country in the midst of the Omicron spread.
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Ricky Ponting commentated the fourth Test from his lounge room and won’t be in Hobart either … but it won’t make any difference.
Covid has changed broadcasting forever, and the enormous challenges cricket’s two networks -Fox Sports and Channel 7 - have been forced to overcome this summer has proven that the impossible is possible – and the viewing experience remains unaffected.
Cricket’s annual Test summer roadshow is the biggest and most complex broadcasting operation in Australian sport – with the best part of 60 cameras in operation and hundreds of crew and commentators transported from city to city.
Sky Sports, the English cricket broadcasters, warned Fox Sports from their own chaotic experiences last year, to split up their commentary and production teams so that if infection infiltrated one team, the other would be ready to go.
That’s proven a saviour. Both Fox and Channel 7 have been impacted heavily by Covid infections, however, being forced to become inventive and creative in remote broadcasting has not impacted on the television ratings records broken for this Ashes.
“I don’t recall life before Covid anymore. It’s a real can-do attitude in the broadcasting community, it doesn’t matter whether they’re from Fox or Seven,” said Channel 7 programming boss, Lewis Martin.
“Covid has just led to all these innovations and some of those innovations will stay with us forever.
“The capacity to be in multiple locations and a wide range of locations.
“Ricky Ponting was commentating the fourth Test from home and nobody noticed.
“The viewer knew because we told them, but the viewing experience wasn’t impacted.”
Proving that calling BBL and football matches remotely is possible through the pandemic will ensure a huge cost saving for broadcasters even when things are back to normal.
Fox Cricket chief Matt Weiss said nothing could quite prepare for the challenges of having 30 per cent of its workforce taken out during the summer.
“It’s testimony to how professional the people involved are, that they’ve been able to deliver the quality of product and production that they have with the Covid restrictions that are placed on us,” said Weiss.
“Over the past two years it has made everyone pretty prepared for this situation, which is why we’ve been able to continue to deliver world class productions.
“But I don’t think you could be prepared for the extent that it’s happened.
“It’s been pretty precarious from ball one.”
Cricket Australia’s Head of broadcast Richard Ostroff said Test cricket broadcasting used to be a massive enterprise when Channel 9 had the rights.
But the new deal, which features Fox Cricket as the host broadcaster, and Channel 7 as their own separate travelling crew, has taken it to a grand scale which makes it one of the biggest productions in world sport.
“It’s on a scale and complexity that’s greater than any major sport in the country, full stop. That’s before the pandemic ever hit,” said Ostroff.
“Obviously Fox are the host broadcaster. They have more cameras, more enhancements, more crew, more talent than Nine ever did, then ... Seven stands up as a host broadcaster in its own right.
“They’ve got their own trucks, their own crew. They take all of Fox’s cameras and then add 11 of their own as well and that creates a lot of technical complexity.
“There’s not even anything that comes close in world cricket either – in terms of the scale and the amount of coverage that is being delivered from those single events.”
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