Cricket Australia chief warns some countries risk going bust by playing Tests
Admitting he has become a 'little unpopular' since taking over from Nick Hockley in March, the former Australian Cricketers' Association boss believes 'scarcity in Test cricket is our friend, not our foe'.
'I don't think everyone in world cricket needs to aspire to play Test cricket, and that might be OK,' Greenberg said on Wednesday with 100 days to go before the Ashes.
'A lot of traditionalists might not like that.
'I'm not suggesting I know the number that will play, but literally we're trying to send countries bankrupt if we force them to try to play Test cricket.
'We need to make sure we invest in the right spaces to play Test cricket where it means something, and has jeopardy, and that's why the Ashes will be as enormous and as profitable as it is because it means something.'
But there could be more Test cricket played in Australia, with Greenberg open to playing red-ball matches in Queensland and the Northern Territory during winter.
Australia are currently hosting South Africa in Twenty20s and ODIs in Darwin, Cairns and Mackay.
Tests were last played in Darwin and Cairns more than 20 years ago, with Australia hosting Sri Lanka in 2003, then Bangladesh the following year.
'I was in Darwin on Sunday night (for the first T20),' Greenberg said. 'I went there primarily because it meant a lot to the people of the Northern Territory. They hadn't had international cricket there for the best part of 17 years.
'The one thing when you go there at this time of year is you take the one biggest variable away, which is the weather. Great facilities ... I can see that (Tests) happening.'
Greenberg has also been exploring privatisation of the Big Bash League, noting other T20 competitions around the world are backed by money outside the governing cricket boards.
'That will upset some people, and it will set the hares racing and potentially of people debating the merits,' he said.
'It would be completely naive of us sitting here in Australia to not explore it. I'm not suggesting that we're going to do it yet.
'I'm not suggesting there's been a decision made, and ultimately it won't just be my decision or Cricket Australia's decision.
'It will be the whole of leadership of Australian cricket and it has to be beneficial for everyone.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Sun
23 minutes ago
- The Sun
Nick Ball holds on to world title with points win over Sam Goodman to stave off unwanted British boxing record
NICK BALL - Britain's last standing male world champion - stopped his WBA featherweight title going Down Under with a magnificent win over Sam Goodman. A few years ago we were in double digits of gold holders across the men's divisions. 4 4 4 But now the Liverpool pocket rocket is the only bloke flying the flag and the 28-year-old did it brilliantly against a worthy challenger. The three judges - who had the horrible job of picking a winner when both men deserved the victory and every Riyal - called it: 117-111, 118-110 and 115-113. The undefeated Scouser tried to live up to his 'Wrecking' nickname from the bell but Aussie Goodman, 26, wisely used his height and reach advantages to keep the pitbull at bay. The 5ft 2in mini-Mike Tyson kept crouching low and launching uppercuts and hooks at the challenger. But Goodman was tough and happy to take-one-to-give-one when the time called for courage, Goodman enjoyed more success in the second, putting his long levers to work against Ball's little pistons. The only noise in the silent Saudi arena was a thick West Coast Australia accent booming 'good boy!' with every scoring shot their lad landed. By the third, Goodman was the leading man and the matador against the Raging Ball, even whipping into hooks to the Brits ironing-board abs. Ball's face was reddening from regular accurate digs and missed wildly and bounced off the ropes when frustration got the better of him. Ball kept hurling haymakers but Goodman was the little grasshopper always dodging the swinging scythe at the last second. Filip Hrgovic survives horror cut and floors David Adeleye to win thriller on Moses Itauma vs Dillian Whyte undercard Ball enjoyed some success early in the fourth but Goodman, who was up from super-bantam for the title challenge, ate the servings of scouse up happily. In trademark fashion, Ball refused to sit between rounds and he raced into the fifth with a couple of smashing right hands. Goodman was replying with plenty of accuracy but blatantly lacking power to trouble the Brit. Ball wisely abandoned the desperate search for a one-punch KO by the sixth and started connecting with more combinations. The seventh was another even affair with neither man willing to take a backward step and both landing scoring shots to impress the judges. Ball reverted to his wild haymakers in the eighth and missed by miles with a pair of left hooks. His right hand was far more effective and might have banked him the round as Goodman never got off the back foot. The ninth was another razor-tight stanza to try to split them. Both warriors were boxing with as much guts as guile and missing as many as they landed. Ball earned a rare cheer from the crowd in the tenth he slashed a couple of uppercuts and hooks through Goodman's guard. But Goodman matched him punch-for-punch in a bout that was running away with our fight-of-the-night award. Ball still had the tenacity to hurl himself in Goodman's direction in the 11th but the underdog was fresh enough to bounce off the ropes like a kangaroo and away to safety. Goodman met the deck in the final session but it was rightly ruled a slip after a rough clinch. Ball finished the humdinger bleeding from his right eye but still landing crackers and Goodman confronted the tiny terror, at every opportunity, until the final bell closed off a superb advert for 9st - and all of - boxing.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Can crocodiles and canoeists coexist at Australia's 2032 Olympic Games?
Andrew Miller is only minutes into a crash course on using a V8 ocean ski when he first drops the C-bomb. The former red beret paratrooper and current president of a Rockhampton canoe club is explaining to a first-time paddler why he won't begin on a K1 – the kind of craft the world's best canoe sprinters will paddle when and if they come here to central Queensland to compete at the 2032 Olympic Games. 'It's like sitting on a pencil,' Miller says. 'If a crocodile so much as tapped your hull, you'd be straight into the drink!' The club secretary, John Mackenzie, admonishes: 'You had to use the C-word.' To be fair to Miller, the proximity of the world's largest living reptile is not much of a secret. On the wall of the humble green shed belonging to the Fitzroy Canoe Club is a mascot of sorts: a toy croc called Fitzy. Pinned to the noticeboard are tips on being 'Croc Wise'. The club's paddling area is a known crocodile habitat, the note reads. Enter boats 'briskly'. Don't drag arms and legs in the water. If you capsize, get out as soon as possible. In March, the Queensland government announced that the Fitzroy River in Rockhampton, about 500km north of Brisbane, would host rowing and canoeing events at the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Scattered along the banks of the Fitzroy are signs warning of injury or death from saltwater crocodiles. A four-metre croc can be right beside you in the water, invisible, one reads. Visitors to the 'beef capital of Australia' are extremely unlikely to see a live saltie. But they won't miss representations of the prehistoric ambush predator throughout the grand sandstone and wrought iron buildings of the river port. In the lane behind the newly refurbished Rockhampton Museum of Art is a crocodile mural, 18 metres long and five metres high. But now the C-bomb has been dropped, the jokes are carpeted. We hop out to our boats atop the backs of crocodiles, Miller reckons. But don't worry, the crocs aren't hungry – 'we feed them all the time'. After the gags, Miller gets serious. You won't encounter a croc, he promises. Just enjoy the river, there isn't a better one between here and the mighty Murray. And with that, as the pinks and purples of dawn filter through the leaves of paperbarks that line the Fitzroy's banks, the canoeists paddle off into the mist that rises from the chalky brown water. Corellas screech from towering gums. Pelicans break the still surface of the river. An osprey peers down from the branches of a dead tree. The kayak quivers as its rudder hits a clump of duckweed. The canoeists paddle upstream, away from the city and the barrage that divides the Fitzroy between its salt and freshwater reaches. This piece of infrastructure is one reason Miller contends the river is 'pristine'. Unlike those to the south, the freshwater Fitzroy is not swept by tides, lined by mud and mangrove or racked by wind and wave. That concrete barrier, built as a water storage system to help meet the region's water supply needs, also marks a boundary on the government's Queensland crocodile management plan between targeted management and general management zones. Upstream of the barrage for 20km, park rangers are tasked with removing 'all large crocodiles' and any croc 'displaying dangerous behaviour' from the water. After a couple of kilometres, a pair of canoeists pass through a stretch of river they claim is the territory of a croc about the length at which it is officially considered 'large' – that is, longer than two metres. A few kilometres farther upstream is the spot that one canoe club member sighted a 4.5 metre saltie two years ago. After several weeks, it was captured and removed. This is winter, too – the same time of year that sunny Queensland will host the summer Olympics – and the period in which crocs are most easy to spot, basking their cold blood on riverbanks. Yet, statistically, Miller is almost certain to be right. The Boyne River, more than 100km to the south, is officially considered the southern boundary of typical crocodile habitat. Here in the lower reaches of croc country, the number and density of these apex predators is far lower than in the faraway tropics to the north. A government monitoring program estimates the number of crocodiles in rivers of the Cape York Peninsula – more than 1,500km to the north – at three crocodiles per kilometre. That ratio declines southward, down to 0.2 crocs per km on the Fitzroy. The canoe club has been paddling here since the late 1970s without incident. They are on the water almost every day, often starting in the dark. So, too, their rowing counterparts, who are also looking forward to hosting the Olympics. Mackenzie says he has been paddling in the river for the past seven years and has seen a croc upstream of the barrage only once. It was during the colder months and the saltie had its snout out of the water. During the central Queensland winter, he says, crocodiles aren't breeding, aren't territorial and aren't hungry. He wasn't worried at all. 'It was doing its thing, and I was doing mine,' Mackenzie says. 'It was quite a majestic encounter'. Other local water users aren't so enamoured of sharing the water with these toothy reptiles. Steve Diehm grew up five minutes from the boat ramp above the barrage on the banks of the Fitzroy and has spent his whole life in Rockhampton. An avid waterskier, Diehm had a boat before he had a car. The Fifo oil and gas worker met his wife and raised his three children waterskiing. But, over recent years, Diehm began being gnawed by a sense of unease familiar to many north of the tropic of capricorn. Since they were protected in the 1970s after being hunted to near annihilation, saltwater crocodiles – which despite their name also inhabit freshwater environments – have been steadily returning to their former range, reclaiming waterways that people swam for decades. Diehm had always been aware he was in croc habitat but began to feel less and less safe. Then, when he saw a picture of that 4.5 metre saltie captured in 2023, a 'horrible feeling' wrenched his stomach. He had skied that 'exact bank' for 15 years. Diehm thought about his children. The 46-year-old was devastated when he made the decision that it was no longer safe for his family to be on the Fitzroy. Looking out across the river gives Diehm a pang of remorse. It is perfectly smooth, basking in sunshine, a 'skier's dream' – and there is not a soul on the water. 'This should be like the Murray Darling,' he says. 'There should be houseboats workin' on here. There should be, you know, park a houseboat, swim off it, ski off it. 'All this, all the way up here, there's this ability for tourism, for so much good, old-fashioned, outdoor fun.' Diehm believes the Olympics would be great for Rockhampton but, without a change to crocodile management, he reckons athletes will be 'running the gauntlet'. The University of Queensland's crocodile expert, Prof Craig Franklin, runs the world's largest and longest active crocodile tracking program. The Fitzroy Olympics plan 'worries' him 'on a number of levels'. 'No. I don't believe it's safe,' he says. 'I think it's foolish.' Franklin fears the Olympic event sends the message that it is 'OK to go swimming' in places like the Fitzroy. But crocodiles travel vast distances over short periods, crossing barriers and moving overland for several kilometres. 'Rowing in a place where it's the natural habitat of the world's largest species of crocodilian and, arguably, the most dangerous?' he says. 'Why would you do that?' For Mackenzie, though, there is no other river like it. Still flush from his early morning canoe as he sips a coffee at his regular cafe near the river, the retired financial planner reflects that many people worry about all the wrong things. In the year to early August, 178 people died on Queensland roads. That morning, Mackenzie watched the Fitzroy's surface ripple with the movements of big catfish, barramundi and bum-breathing turtles. So, yes, he knows there are risks when he gets on to the water, but they are ones Mackenzie gladly accepts. One of the beauties of this river, he says, is that it's alive.
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
Australia stun South Africa with incredible comeback in Rugby Championship opener
Australia rallied from 22-0 down as captain Harry Wilson scored two tries in a stunning 38-22 bonus-point victory over South Africa in their Rugby Championship opener on Saturday, the Wallabies ' first victory at Ellis Park since 1963. South Africa raced into a commanding lead through tries by winger Kurt-Lee Arendse, centre Andre Esterhuizen and number eight Siya Kolisi, but their Achilles heel has been the breakdown and it was there that Australia began to take control. The Springboks led 22-5 at half-time but Australia came alive in the second period and were excellent in soaking up pressure and hitting the world champions with fast breaks as they won on South African soil for the first time in 14 years. Winger Dylan Pietsch, centre Joseph Suaalii, winger Max Jorgensen and Tom Wright also crossed for the visitors in one of Australia's greatest test wins. "This (victory) is right up there, it has been 60-odd years since the Wallabies have had success in Joburg. We worked hard and had confidence in ourselves," Australia prop James Slipper said. "We had a slow start, but credit to the boys, they stuck in there. It was a good squad effort tonight and one we can be proud of. It is a special moment for the group." South Africa did not score a point after the 18th minute in a performance that will provide much soul-searching as they could not handle Australia's accuracy in the tight and broken play. "We let ourselves down," Springboks captain Kolisi said. "Things we worked on, discipline, the breakdown ... they won the breakdown battle. We have to take it on the chin, but it is unacceptable the way we performed. "We would get into their 22 and they would steal the ball (at the breakdown). Credit to Australia, they kept fighting and never gave up. They deserved it." Australia looked all at sea at the start, but thanks to several outstanding individual displays they clawed back to secure a comprehensive victory. When Arendse, Esterhuizen with his first Springbok try, and Kolisi crossed, it was early one-way traffic but by the half-hour mark the momentum had swung Australia's way. They scored first in the second half to close the gap to 10 points when Wilson burst into a gap in the Springbok defence and flyhalf James O'Connor added the conversion on his return to test rugby after three years. Australia then took control against the rattled home side, whose increasingly desperate attacks were countered with further tries by the visitors.
