Boxing Day Test to be locked in at the MCG until 2031

Melbourne’s Boxing Day Test will be locked in for the next seven years, with Australia and England to play a showpiece match to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Test cricket in March 2027, as part of a complex web of deals between Cricket Australia and five state governments.

Terms struck between CA and the Victorian government, set to be unveiled as early as Thursday after a protracted negotiation that attracted criticism from within Spring Street, were the last piece of a national puzzle that trades off greater schedule certainty for higher taxpayer investment in the promotion of cricket each summer.

Final details were being nutted out between all parties on Wednesday night, according to three sources briefed on the matter but unauthorised to speak publicly until an announcement had been made.

Shane Warne is given a standing ovation after claiming his 700th Test wicket at the MCG on Boxing Day 2006.Credit: Fairfax

As part of the deals, one of the last major assignments for CA chief executive Nick Hockley before he announced his resignation last week, Test matches in Melbourne (Boxing Day), Sydney (New Year) and Adelaide (pre-Christmas) will each be kept in the same time slot until 2031 and designated as major events.

Talks about the “Sesquicentenary Test match”, devised to make Melbourne the centre of the cricket universe as it was for the Centenary Test in 1977, were first revealed by this masthead last year. England’s board recently agreed to the match, making it official.

While the agreements stop short of the sorts of terms agreed between the Victorian government and the AFL in 2018 – a broad $500 million funding deal that secured grand finals at the MCG until 2057 – they are collectively set to be worth some $30 million over seven years.

“The MCG is the home of the Boxing Day Test, and the event is already locked in for 26 December 2024,” a Victorian government spokesperson told this masthead.

“We’re working hard to ensure that any future arrangements deliver benefits to the Victorian taxpayer.”

CA declined to comment.

The governments of Western Australia and Queensland have signed shorter-term deals, for three and two years each.

Perth Stadium will be home of the opening Test of the season until at least 2026 after forging ahead of Brisbane, which is only guaranteed a Test match for the next two summers and visits by India and England.

This is at least partly due to the outdated state of the Gabba, which faces an uncertain future after rebuild plans for the 2032 Olympics were shelved in favour of a more modest refurbishment that has no clear timeframe. In 2026-27, when four home Tests against New Zealand are scheduled before England’s one-off match, Brisbane may be missing from the roster for the first time in 50 summers.

The tender process for international cricket over a six-year period was devised by CA to build a more consistent level of government support for Test matches, increasing their visibility and public spending on services like security, catering and traffic management, while also allowing more interstate and overseas tourism around those games.

Selected MCG Boxing Day Test crowds

• 2013: 91,112 (versus England)
• 2015: 53,389 (versus West Indies)
• 2016: 63,478 (versus Pakistan)
• 2019: 80,473 (versus New Zealand)
• 2020: 27,615* (versus India). * Crowd impacted by COVID-19 pandemic
• 2023: 62,167 (versus Pakistan)

For so long the heartbeat of summer, they have not previously been inked into the sorts of major event contracts that enable the likes of the Australian Grand Prix, the Australian Open tennis or World Cups to take centre stage in each major city.

CA has found itself negotiating between states like SA and WA, which want better Test matches but would almost certainly never take the marquee slots owned by Melbourne and Sydney, and the bigger states wondering why there is any need for a taxpayer deal at all.

One of the requests put to the NSW government was for the lighting up of the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge during men’s and women’s matches in the city “to increase the PR exposure of both NSW as a tourist destination and the events themselves”.

Justin Langer at Perth’s showpiece Optus Stadium.Credit: Getty Images

Hockley, a major events specialist who was part of the organisation of the 2012 London Olympics and the 2015 men’s ODI and 2020 women’s T20 World Cups in Australia, collaborated with CA chair and former NSW Premier Mike Baird to stitch together the deals. They have not been struck without rancour.

South Australia’s premier Peter Malinauskas termed the scheduling of Tests over the past couple of seasons a “disgrace”, as SA made a bold but unsuccessful bid to claim the New Year’s Test from Sydney.

More recently, a delay in Victoria’s decision to sign on, well after the other states had done so, caused one state government minister to privately accuse CA of using the hold-up as “leverage” during negotiations.

CA has identified that the drop-off in crowds at the MCG on days two to four of the Boxing Day Test represent a major growth opportunity, alongside the prospect of filling Perth Stadium.

“What we’re working on with the MCG and all our partners is talking about the festivalisation of the Boxing Day Test,” Hockley said earlier this year. “That’s in large part why we’re looking to do longer-term arrangements where we have a longer time to plan.”

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