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With the five-match
Border-Gavaskar Trophy set to start in Perth on November 22 of this year, Perth
Stadium has overtaken the Gabba as Australia’s favourite location for the first
Test. From there, the series will travel to Adelaide for the day-night Test,
Brisbane, Melbourne for Boxing Day, and Sydney for the New Year’s Test.
Cricket Australia released their summer international calendar, featuring the
Border-Gavaskar Trophy as the highlight of the programme. Following Perth, the
second Test will take place at Adelaide Oval from December 6–10, with day and
night pink-ball play. Brisbane will host the third Test from December 14–18.
The customary Boxing Day test date of December 26 at the MCG will host the
fourth test, and the SCG will host the fifth test beginning on January 3.
Despite India
winning the series, Australia has an impeccable record in Perth’s newest
stadium, having won four of the last five Tests played there, the first of
which was against India in December 2018. During the 2020–21 series, which
India also won when the final Test was played in Brisbane, Perth did not host a
Test match between Australia and India.
The decision to give Perth the first Test against Brisbane was made for a
number of reasons, according to CA’s head of scheduling Peter Roach, with the
favourable broadcast timeslot for viewers in India and Australia’s east coast
serving as the decisive factor.
“The clear
advice from our national team is that there is a preference to start series
strongly at venues where they’re really comfortable and Perth and Brisbane they
believe are somewhat comparable in terms of the advantage they get out of that,”
Roach said. “They’re the hardest and bounciest pitches in Australia. They
also believe that playing day-night Tests in Adelaide is a significant
advantage and the stats there are pretty conclusive too.
“So they will look at this schedule and some will say Gabba first would
have been better than Perth. Others will say Perth then Gabba. I think that gap
has really closed in recent times and the way our players think about that, and
having Adelaide as the day-night Test, they’ll be really buoyed about that
again. So we’re really comfortable that this gives us a great opportunity to
compete with a really strong Indian team.”