Chappell-Hadlee Trophy will interrupt Australian cricket team’s momentum, writes Richard Hinds

LIKE distant relatives who turn up announced as you crack open a beer and put up your feet, the one-day internationals have come at precisely the wrong time.

Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood have to back up from Test duty for the one-day series against New Zealand. Picture: Getty Images

LIKE those distant relatives who turn up announced just as you crack open a beer and put up your feet, the one-day internationals have come at precisely the wrong time.

The prize for the three-match series against New Zealand beginning at the SCG on Sunday is the Chappell-Hadlee Trophy. Given there are ferret races that have created more enthusiasm — both from participants and observers — it might as well be called the Contractual Obligations Cup.

As with the recent five-match fixture in South Africa, the best indication of the worth of this ODI series is the anxiety around selection. For Australians there is a real concern some of their best bowlers Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood will play.

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Sharing this fear is Darren Lehmann who seemed miffed his two best weapons could be blunted before the Test series against Pakistan. Although so terse was the Australian coach during his post-game press conference in Adelaide it was difficult to tell if he was annoyed by recent criticism or trying to quit smoking without nicotine patches.

Mitchell Starc may line up in the upcoming ODI series.

The notion Starc and Hazlewood will be exhausted bowling a maximum of 30 overs over six days is perhaps overblown. There is a solid argument that continuity not bed rest is the best way to ensure bowlers maintain rhythm and perpetuate strong form.

But if the ODIs will not physically damage Australia’s preparation for Pakistan, this Testus Interruptus is not the blessing it might have seemed just a week ago when a blunt skewer in the eyeball was more enticing than watching another batting collapse.

As Australia flailed the knees jerked reflexively in the direction of Test cricket which was prematurely declared terminally ill — a prognosis made with a certain joy by those not concerned the BBL will squander the game’s rich inheritance.

Yet the Adelaide Test with its pink ball and twilight theatrics gave a sense of the format’s enduring possibilities.

Most importantly, it showed large crowds and television audiences could be engrossed by very traditional cricket played under more viewer-friendly conditions — and is there anything more traditional than debutant Matt Renshaw leaving and blocking 32 consecutive scoreless yet highly valuable deliveries?

Now, given their unwelcome intrusion, it is ODIs that are under the microscope. The interest in this series — or lack thereof — will prompt the usual debate about the health of a format that waxes and wanes between World Cups and the occasional lively game.

There has been much tinkering with the ODI format over the years. Power-plays and fielding restrictions have made 50-over cricket a smorgasbord for heavily armed batsmen now schooled in the vicious arts of BBL. Although, counterintuitively, spin bowling once considered vulnerable in the limited-overs arena has become an asset against batsmen ill-equipped to handle a cunning tweaker’s guile.

Consequently what was the short form of Test cricket has become the long form of BBL. As such its value in preparing players for Test cricket is questionable at best. Hence the disappointment that five ODIs in South Africa and the Matador Cup, rather than at least one more round of Sheffield Shield, preceded the Test series.

Darren Lehman and Josh Hazlewood have some decisions to make. Picture: Jono Searle.

At the same time a format that once appealed to non-purists for its brevity now seems, over seven long hours, exhausting to the T20 generation. Although not to television programmers in the subcontinent, particularly, where it remains a valuable commodity.

For that reason alone the ODIs retain their prominent place in a schedule more crowded than the foyer of Trump Towers the day after the US election. Yet this week the one-dayers seem far more like unwelcome intruders than beloved old friends.

Originally published as Chappell-Hadlee Trophy will interrupt Australian cricket team’s momentum, writes Richard Hinds