Daniel Brettig is The Age's chief cricket writer and the author of several books on cricket.
When Australian cricket powerbrokers gathered for a soirée at the Paddington home of Sydney businessman and Cricket NSW chair John Knox, fault lines were already starting to form.
Australian cricket’s biggest state fears that privatising Big Bash League clubs will expose the national game to club versus country tensions that have been evident in other Twenty20 leagues around the world.
The power play over Cricket Australia’s push to sell off stakes in BBL teams, which would be the biggest upheaval in Australian cricket since Kerry Packer’s World Series revolution, goes all the way to the top.
Sam Konstas has been formally relegated to the fringes of Australian cricket after being cut from the list of central contracts handed out by Cricket Australia on Wednesday.
Australia is set to slash its contract list to be able to pay a premium to the likes of captain Pat Cummins and freewheeling deputy Travis Head ahead of an unrelenting schedule of 20 Test matches within 12 months.
Victoria disintegrated in the space of 53 minutes on the final morning of the Sheffield Shield final to hand South Australia back-to-back titles for the first time in the state’s history.
Australian cricket will consider raising millions more from wagering to bring the national game closer to the huge levels of gambling revenue scooped up by the NRL and the AFL.
Cricket Australia bosses want to sell multimillion-dollar stakes in every Big Bash League club, but not everyone is happy with the plan.
The MCG has traditionally been seen as the host of major events due to its sheer size, but other Australian venues are emerging as competitors for major cricket.
With the spur of 2023 to help them, India are now making the very most of their unrivalled talent pipeline, and hoovering up global trophies as quickly as the ICC can put them up