The landscape of international cricket has evolved. For most players, leagues supersede national teams. Nicholas Pooran retired last year at the age of 29 to prioritise franchise cricket, aka making more money. Most cricket boards realise they’ll lose some of the best cricketers if they don’t allow them to play in T20 leagues.
Cricket Australia (CA) is also trying to tip that line. Players like Marcus Stoinis are no longer interested in a central contract and make themselves available sparingly. CA knows the big stars can outearn their annual salary at just one tournament, the Indian Premier League (IPL).
Challenge of juggling franchise & international cricket
Australia’s head coach, Andrew McDonald, believes managing players, i.e., convincing them to play for Australia in between major Test series or ICC events like the upcoming ODI World Cup 2027, will be a challenge. CA and other big cricket boards realise the cricket year for them is basically 10 months, with April and May basically reserved for the IPL.
“That’s going to be the biggest challenge. How do we get the players through that demand? How do we manage them, in particular our fast bowlers. I don’t know whether I can say this publicly, because they might have a crack at me, but we are getting older. So that’s going to create some different management challenges. They’ve been incredibly robust, a lot of those players, and then a few had a few recent hiccups, so it’s something that we need to invest a lot of time into, and equally the batters,” McDonald told reporters before departing for Pakistan.
Image Credit: AlamyBarring a couple of English players and Pakistanis, who aren’t allowed to play, all major cricketers flock to India for the biggest cricket tournament in the world. CA needs to manage players like Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins, and Josh Hazlewood, all of whom are ageing fast bowlers and don’t have many years left. The pace trio turned up for IPL 2026, despite all managing injuries.
In recent years, all three have had troubles with injuries. By the time the ODI World Cup arrives, Starc, Hazlewood, and Cummins will be 37, 36, and 34. Moreover, the 50-over format has started to become obsolete to some extent. In fact, the pace trio has played just 22 ODIs between them and just one together since the 2023 edition of the tournament.
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McDonald made it clear that all three want to play the ODI World Cup in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Namibia. However, since they are ageing, their priority might be to earn more, especially Starc and Hazlewood, since they are older. It’s one of the reasons why the former retired from T20Is. The Aussie coach also defended the pace trio for playing in Bangladesh and Pakistan from May to June, adding that all need rest to keep themselves fit for 2027.
“I think people look at the immediate games in front of them and go, ‘Okay, well, why aren’t they playing there?’ But if you actually work back from 2027 and look at what we’ve got coming up, this is the last significant break that we get to be able to invest in their bodies to set themselves up to get all the way through 2027. I think there needs to be a lot of trust in what we’re doing to be able to get them there. It’s going to be a significant challenge. We have done this before, in 2023. That was 19 Tests, so this is two more. The biggest difference there is that we’re four years older, so that creates another layer and another challenge within that.
I think there’s almost a misconception that the players are sort of picking and choosing as to where they play and which series they play in. These decisions are made around the management of what we have coming up within the schedule, and they don’t choose that. We work with them on it. Those players want to play. We just don’t feel like it’s the best time for them to play, fill that extra month up, and then we actually start chasing our tails a little bit as we go into what we know we’ve got coming up. So, I just want to dispel that sort of narrative out there around players picking and choosing,” he added.
Cricket Australia admits IPL a challenge as ageing Starc, Cummins & Hazlewood vie for ODI World Cup 2027 Inside Sport India.
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