By IANS
Melbourne : Australia has managed to save its traditional Boxing Day Test in Melbourne and New Year’s Test in Sydney from being chopped off the International Cricket Council (ICC) fixtures.
The South Africans in particular are unhappy that the Australians jealously protect their prized Test timeslots. In a complaint to ICC, they demanded that they too must get the opportunity to host these traditional Tests.
Cricket Australia (CA) chief executive James Sutherland said that CA has secured the Boxing Day and New Year’s Test timeslots till 2017, The Age reported Tuesday.
But CA parted with almost 30 years of tradition by confirming it would scrap the triangular one-day format for at least the next two summers.
Sutherland Monday vowed to fiercely protect the Melbourne and Sydney Tests, the jewels in the Australian cricketing summer, and said they were safe for the next 10 years, according to a draft of the ICC future tours programme.
South Africa will tour Australia in 2008-09 for three Tests, including the Boxing Day and New Year’s fixtures, and a five-match ODI series.
CA pays compensation in excess of $300,000 to South Africa in the years it sacrifices its Boxing Day fixture to tour Australia.
Given crowds at Tests in South Africa are tiny compared with the 192,337 that attended the most recent Australia-South Africa Boxing Day Test in 2005-06 – the biggest non-Ashes crowd for a Melbourne Test since 1975-76 – Australia was working from a position of strength.
“One of our absolute priorities when we are working on the programme is to protect those key dates around the December into January period,” Sutherland was quoted as saying.