Former Australian cricket coach, John Buchanan, has presented a radical change to the summer of cricket schedule, which would include a dumping of the Boxing Day Test.
As reported by Fairfax Media, Buchanan has offered a seven-point plan that he hopes both Cricket Australia and the Australian Cricketers Association will embrace, which will ultimately help them end the bitter pay dispute.
The former right-hand batsman’s plan is underpinned by a few key concepts.
“There are three main thrusts,” Buchanan told SEN’s The Run Home.
“One is putting significantly more resources into grassroots cricket, second is strengthening club and state cricket by getting the best players to play there as often as possible, and the third is about refining the domestic schedule.
“I’m suggesting the schedule should look somewhat like this. Long form cricket should be at the beginning of the season because most codes and players understand the more of that cricket you can play, the better your skills are in place to play the shorter forms of the game which require greater preciseness.
“Long form cricket will be played up until mid-December. From mid-December, you recognise the future of cricket which revolves around BBL and T20 cricket during the holiday period from about the third week of January.
“Then we kick into the final part of the season, which is ODI cricket which goes until the end of February. At that point, you can run the AB Medal where it celebrates the whole season.”
While the loss of the Boxing Day Test will no doubt anger fans, Buchanan is of the notion some major adjustments need to be made to the fixture.
“Once we enter the holiday period lets hand it over to what the future is,” Buchanan said.
“We could be looking at double header T20 games, men’s and women’s games. In terms of entertainment and going to watch, we could provide plenty of options.
“The schedule is too confusing and crowded. Let’s ensure we get our best Australian players playing all formats as much as they can in the domestic competition.
“Someone needs to make hard calls and no one is doing it at the moment.”