There is not too long to wait before the international calender is up and running again for Champions Trophy winners Australia, they travel to India to play 7 ODI’s starting on October 25th continuing with what must seem like a never ending run of playing cricket for Ricky Ponting and his team.
The India tour comes less than 3 weeks after the end of the Champions Trophy, a tournament they played on the back of a marathon tour of England which seen them first, play the World T20 at the start of the summer before the 5 test Ashes series, 7 ODI’s and also turn up for 2 Twenty20’s, both of which were abandoned for differing reasons.
After the India ODI series at least they can have a sustained period at home, when there though the workload continues with West Indies arriving for a 3 match test series starting on November 26th, followed by a 3 match test series against Pakistan over the festive period and then 5 ODI’s and ‘shock, horror, only one T20’ between Jan 22nd and Feb 5th before the small matter of resuming hostilites again with West Indies for just the 5 ODI’s and 2 T20’s between 7th Feb and 23rd Feb.
Three days after the last Windies game they play the first of two T20’s in New Zealand followed by another 5 ODI’s and 2 test matches, ending on March 31st. Next they travel to West Indies for the 2010 World Twenty20 starting at the end of April and running through the best part of May, then in June play an ODI in Dublin against Ireland en route back to England to play another 5 ODI’s against the English followed by 2 tests and 2 T20’s against Pakistan.
Although it’s not a day job and most people would give anything to swap places with these players, the workload is too much and good quality cricket must be getting diluted with lethargic ‘here we go again, I’m sick of the site of this team’ monotonous cricket.
The administrators at Cricket Australia must be filling their boots at the moment, over here we think Giles Clarke and his ECB mates are bad, even they could learn a new trick or two from Australia for setting this kind of a schedule.
With the way Ricky Ponting is batting at the moment you have to wonder what is to stop him coming back for the 2013 Ashes series, surely he will still be in the top six batsman in Australia even then. You just have to wonder will he feel like playing on at the end of this schedule, the prospect of a crack at England in Australia after the current marathon in 15 months time must be his main motivation and with this kind of mad scheduling perhaps a good time to call it quits.