Horne: NSW losing no sleep over empty threat surrounding New Year’s Test

Of all the threats that fly around in Australian sport, the off-chance Sydney could lose its iconic New Year’s Test remains one of the silliest and emptiest, writes BEN HORNE.

Sunday’s one-day match at the SCG was played against the bizarre backdrop that Sydney might still lose its New Year’s Test.

Not that the NSW Government appears to be losing one millisecond of sleep over it.

And therein lies the problem for Cricket Australia.

They’re playing with a bad hand in their bid to try and milk more money out of the state Government and compensate for the fact Channel 7 paid less for this TV rights deal than the last.

NSW – quite understandably – is prepared to sit back and call their bluff.

Of all the threats that fly around in Australian sport, surely this must be one of the silliest and emptiest.

The New Year’s Test has become synonymous with Sydney. (Photo by Saeed KHAN / AFP)

It all started a year ago when it was revealed South Australia was making an audacious bid to pinch the New Year’s fixture and bring it to Adelaide.

That didn’t last long. South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas has already changed his tune and instead wants a pre-Christmas Test to become a fixture in Adelaide in late December.

But with Adelaide seemingly happy to back off and find its own permanent spot in the calendar – which it very much deserves – where else exactly would CA envisage playing the New Year’s Test, other than the biggest market in Australia?

It’s understandable that Cricket Australia wants state Governments like Western Australia and Queensland to be more invested in creating an event out of Test matches in Perth and Brisbane that have long been inconsistent when it comes to crowds and atmosphere.

But that’s not really an issue in Sydney where the New Year’s Test has been a tradition for almost 30 years and – with a few exceptions – much longer than that.

Not only that, but as glamorous as it seems to have a New Year’s Test, Sydney is often taking one for the team in that it’s almost invariably a dead rubber and the carnival is already over, yet it still maintains its own signature vibe.

It would take a brave CA administration to shunt NSW to a different point in the calendar for the sake of money, and send the institution that is Jane McGrath Day to the lottery that is Perth, Brisbane … Hobart or Canberra.

The Sydney Test is often referred to as the Pink Test. (Photo by Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)

The NRL can shop State of Origin fixtures around to other cities all it likes because they can still guarantee the key markets of Sydney and Brisbane a match every year.

Turning Test cricket into a bidding war isn’t so easy, because it’s Cricket Australia’s duty to take the sport around the country every summer.

That’s not to say NSW and the SCG should be untouchable.

No. 1 Cricket Australia should be demanding the SCG be more accountable for the quality of its pitch, which was very good for this year’s Test, but has been lacking in vibrancy and character for several summers previous.

Same too, Cricket Australia should be asking questions about the state of play in NSW Cricket, after a concerning dip in standards in the country’s most important cricketing nursery over recent seasons.

But authentic sporting foundations and traditions of the stature of the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne and the New Year’s Test in Sydney are rare across all sports and priceless for Australian cricket, so let’s stop pretending they’re up for grabs.

Originally published as Horne: NSW losing no sleep over empty threat surrounding New Year’s Test