Cricket Australia announces schedule for blockbuster India-Australia Test series

The blockbuster five-match Test series between India and Australia will get underway at Perth’s Optus Stadium on November 22, the venue replacing Adelaide Oval as the national cricket board’s preferred choice for the season opener.

The series will then move to Adelaide for the day-night pink-ball Test from December 6-10, followed by Brisbane (Dec 14-18) and Melbourne for the traditional Boxing Day Test (Dec 26-30). The rubber will conclude with the New Year’s Test in Sydney from January 3-7.

These matches from the high-profile series are part of next summer’s international schedule released by Cricket Australia (CA) on Tuesday.

One of the most important factors behind awarding Perth the hosting rights for the first Test over Brisbane was the friendly broadcast timezone 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.

The latest edition of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy was on Monday extended by a match to a five-match series for the first time since the 1991-92 season.

In the past four series between the two teams, India have won on all four occasions, including back-to-back away Test series wins in 2018-19 and 2020-21.

However, Pat Cummins and Co beat India in the World Test Championship final in London last year.

There is a nine-day gap between the first two Tests, which would give the players enough time to practice with the pink ball and get used to it. On their previous tour, India had lost the pink ball Test badly before bouncing back to pull off one of their greatest series triumphs.

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