Old Format Gave SCG And MCG Relevance

Adam Collins discusses the advantages of reverting to Australia’s traditional Test dates in its two big sporting cities

- Adam Collins

Another Melbourne Ashes battle, another dead rubber. The only Test match in the four-year cycle anywhere in the world that can entice up to 95,000 or more rugged individuals through the gates, yet it is routinely played in a series that has already been resolved. Same old, same old.

Sure, the state of the current clash won’t materially diminish the attendance. This is Melbourne. They (we) show up every time as a point of pride. After all, there is a tag to uphold as the sporting capital of the world, underpinned by the biggest attendances in all the land.

Even so, we are missing a trick. No, not by moving it away from Boxing Day – let’s not say things we can’t take back. Rather, the key is adjusting the summer’s calendar in a more wholesale way to make sure that when the carnival comes to Melbourne and Sydney that the Ashes (and other series) are, by design, still alive.

The Sydney Test might not draw the same numbers as Melbourne – a smaller ground in a city with less of an appetite for live sport more generally. But it is an icon all the same, in Australia’s most populated city.

Indeed, its status as the New Year’s Test is as locked into the calendar as Melbourne the day after Christmas. What both have in common is that they don’t get the Ashes-defining moments anymore.