More India v Australia coming up?

Malcolm Conn reports in 'The Australian' that the BCCI has approached Cricket Australia to convert the 7 ODI series (scheduled for October) into a 2 test 3 ODI series.

On the face of it, the story is incredulous and it seems unprecedented. But in reality it is not.

There have been at least two previous occasions where Malcolm Conn did not end his write-up with the phrase "India have been the worst behaved team in the last decade".

Back to the actual news item. This may seem like a brazenly opportunistic move by the BCCI to protect the #1 ranking that India first reached last December and held on to after drawing against South Africa.

The BCCI is often (and rightly so) accused of giving lip service to test cricket after jumping onto the ODI and T20 bandwagons. This move, and a similar move late last year to get South Africa to play 2 tests in February, shows that there is a section of the board that listens to what the bulk of the players seem to want. Of course, it is perhaps accurate to argue that had India not been #1, the BCCI would have not bothered to reach out to South Africa earlier and Australia now.

That said, it is quite likely that the overtures were not necessarily one-way traffic. Australia are not scheduled to play any tests between July and November. So they desperately need the tests as well, for different reasons. In addition, if they actually do win against India by say a 2-0 margin, they will definitely get to #2 and possibly reach #1 (if South Africa concede even a single test against West Indies).

Australia takes on Pakistan at (hold your collective breath!) Lord's and Leeds in July and then host the Ashes. Why are Australia playing Pakistan in England? Easy, because Pakistan were supposed to host Australia this year, and there was a small matter of a terror attack on the bus ferrying the Sri Lankan team.

As an aside, one of the consequences of the attack was the fact that while Pakistan lost the right to host World Cup matches, it did not lose its status as a host!

A test series between India and Australia is invariably eagerly anticipated and expected to be a great one to follow. For evidence, see 2003, 2004, 2008 part a and 2008 part b.

I really hope that the plan comes through. There's an overdose of T20 happening right now, and I really want to watch some test cricket. In fact, I'll probably settle for watching county championship games if they were telecast here!

Labels: australia, india