An endurance event disguised as the summer of cricket

The Australian home Test cricket “season”, if that’s what it is, is five days into its 40-day run.

Between last Wednesday’s opening and the closing day on 8 January, the program squeezes five matches into five and a half weeks. Back-to-back Test matches used to require special management. Fast bowlers hate them. This season they go back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back. The leather-flingers will be in mutiny.

As the hosts went through their paces in finishing off a stubborn West Indies in Perth on Sunday, a parallel narrative was beginning to unfold, in which we were not seeing the end of a prestigious international fixture but the start of a fairly gruelling endurance event.

The reason behind this compression is well-worn: Australia is interlocked with a global schedule and no longer sets its own rules on its own turf. More interesting than the cause, right now, are the consequences.

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