{"id":3452,"date":"2015-12-21T15:01:57","date_gmt":"2015-12-21T05:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sams-blog.com\/?p=3452"},"modified":"2017-12-09T21:22:40","modified_gmt":"2017-12-09T11:22:40","slug":"t20-takes-pride-of-place-in-australian-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/?p=3452","title":{"rendered":"T20 takes pride of place in Australian summer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Australian cricket season has just started flourishing with its Twenty20 tournament getting underway. Crowds are there, so too television audiences.<\/p>\n<p>This year the Big Bash League is the main story, not the Test cricket that has traditionally been the centrepiece.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nTwo nondescript teams have been booked for the summer, with neither New Zealand nor the West Indies the kind that would challenge Australia.<\/p>\n<p>And the better team of the two was booked for the earlier part of the summer. New Zealand lost two of three Tests and drew one. The West Indies have lost one and nobody gives them a chance in hell of even making a contest of the remaining two Tests.<\/p>\n<p>Only India or England would pull the crowds: England because the traditional rivalry with Australia goes back more than a century and India because the team is a feisty lot who will nowadays give as good as they get. Last time out, they drew two of the four Tests and gave up winning positions in the two they lost.<\/p>\n<p>South Africa will not visit at this time of the year any more; they have their own season to look after and it is the biggest time of the cricketing year for them too. They are slated to play England in a Test series that starts on Boxing Day.<\/p>\n<p>So is the T20 the new medicine for Australian cricket? It depends a lot on who is here to play Test cricket.<\/p>\n<p>These are the kind of questions the International Cricket Conference should be considering. But it appears it has more important things to do than nurturing the game from which it earns its daily bread.<br \/>\n<!-- Start of StatCounter Code for Default Guide --><br \/>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\">\nvar sc_project=2720500; \nvar sc_invisible=1; \nvar sc_security=\"d25d8712\"; \nvar scJsHost = ((\"https:\" == document.location.protocol) ?\n\"https:\/\/secure.\" : \"http:\/\/www.\");\ndocument.write(\"<sc\"+\"ript type='text\/javascript' src='\" +\nscJsHost+\n\"statcounter.com\/counter\/counter.js'><\/\"+\"script>\");\n<\/script><br \/>\n<noscript><\/p>\n<div class=\"statcounter\"><a title=\"Web Analytics\"\nhref=\"http:\/\/statcounter.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img\nclass=\"statcounter\"\nsrc=\"\/\/c.statcounter.com\/2720500\/0\/d25d8712\/1\/\" alt=\"Web\nAnalytics\"><\/a><\/div>\n<p><\/noscript><br \/>\n<!-- End of StatCounter Code for Default Guide --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Australian cricket season has just started flourishing with its Twenty20 tournament getting underway. Crowds are there, so too television audiences. This year the Big Bash League is the main story, not the Test cricket that has traditionally been the centrepiece.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,40,2,30,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-australia","category-cricket","category-england","category-india","category-new-zealand","category-west-indies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3440,"url":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/?p=3440","url_meta":{"origin":3452,"position":0},"title":"One-sided cricket matches are here to stay. Why would you attend?","date":"November 15, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"World cricket is in a parlous state, not in terms of the money it makes, but in terms of the contests it provides. The games are one-sided to the extent that patrons at the grounds are few and far-between. There is no better illustration of this than in the ongoing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Ashes&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":60,"url":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/?p=60","url_meta":{"origin":3452,"position":1},"title":"Cricket is all about politics","date":"July 2, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"SPORT and politics should not mix. How often have you heard that meaningless line? It is untrue of any sport - and most of all cricket. Following the humiliation meted out to former Australian prime minister John Howard - the man was roundly snubbed by Asian and African cricketing nations\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Australia&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1653,"url":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/?p=1653","url_meta":{"origin":3452,"position":2},"title":"Australian cricket continues on its old, merry path","date":"December 9, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"EARLIER this year, after England sealed a resounding 3-1 win in the Ashes Test series, Australian cricket authorities, apparently all shaken up, launched an inquiry to find out why the team had been beaten, and so comprehensively too. This was the third time that Tasmania's Ricky Ponting had led the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Australia&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":78,"url":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/?p=78","url_meta":{"origin":3452,"position":3},"title":"Ashes to Ashes: Australia left in the dust","date":"January 8, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"AT LEAST one Australia could have been happy after the catastrophic defeat in the fifth and final Ashes Test - but even that didn't happen. Ricky Ponting, forced to stand down due to an injury, would have been happy that the team had not done better under Michael Clarke than\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Ashes&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1730,"url":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/?p=1730","url_meta":{"origin":3452,"position":4},"title":"Not embarrassed? India's excuses don't really convince anyone","date":"January 29, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"PREDICTABLY, India has been whitewashed by Australia in the four-Test series. This is the second such loss abroad in the space of six months; in between, India managed to beat the West Indies at home 1-0, with two Tests drawn. In that three-Test series, India was twice outscored in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Australia&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":58,"url":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/?p=58","url_meta":{"origin":3452,"position":5},"title":"Howard's rejection by the ICC is reason to rejoice","date":"July 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"WORLD cricket has finally shown some commonsense in rejecting the bid by former Australian prime minister John Howard to become the vice-president of its governing body. The post of vice-president serves as a two-year incumbency for the next president and the nominations for this position come from different cricket-playing regions\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Australia&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3452"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4225,"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3452\/revisions\/4225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}