NEW DELHI: Cricket Australia announced on Tuesday that Perth will host the first Test of the highly anticipated five-match India-Australia series in November. The series will conclude with the customary New Year's Test in Sydney.
On November 22, the sides' first five-Test series in more than 30 years will begin at Perth Stadium.
The series' second game will take place as a day-night Test in
Adelaide
on December 6, the third game will take place at the
Gabba
in Brisbane on December 14, and the fourth game will take place in Melbourne on December 26-traditionally known as "Boxing Day."
Australia have not defeated India in a home Test series since 2014-15, losing both the 2018-19 and 2020-21 series.
Australia defeated India in the
World Test Championship
final and in the 50-overs World Cup final last year.
The itinerary for the Women's Ashes between
Australia
and England, which begins with an ODI in Sydney on January 12, was also released by Cricket Australia.
The
Melbourne Cricket Ground
will host a one-time, day-night Test on January 30 to conclude the Ashes. This will be the stadium's first pink ball international.
"One of the most important factors behind awarding Perth the hosting rights for the first Test over Brisbane was the friendly broadcast time zone for viewers of both countries," said
Peter Roach
, CA's head of scheduling.
"The clear advice from our national team is that there is a preference to start series strongly at venues where they're really comfortable and Perth and Brisbane they believe are somewhat comparable in terms of the advantage they get out of that," Roach said.
"They're the hardest and bounciest pitches in Australia. They also believe that playing day-night Tests in Adelaide is a significant advantage and the stats there are pretty conclusive too."
According to Roach, the Optus Stadium, where Australia have won all four Tests, is now comparable to the Gabba.
"They will look at this schedule and some will say Gabba first would have been better than Perth. Others will say Perth then Gabba.
"I think that gap has really closed in recent times and the way our players think about that, and having Adelaide as the day-night Test, they'll be really buoyed about that again.
"So we're really comfortable that this gives us a great opportunity to compete with a really strong Indian team," Roach said.
On their previous tour, India had lost the pink ball Test badly before bouncing back to pull off one of their greatest series triumphs.
(With agencies inputs)
English (US) ·