Australia women’s cricketers want to return their home games to peak summer

Senior women’s players have called on Cricket Australia (CA) to push to return some of their games to the peak of summer, fearing the current schedule will hurt the sport’s growth among girls.

Australia begin their home summer against Bangladesh on Friday, marking the first of three ODIs in Brisbane before three T20s against New Zealand in Sydney. All three of the Sydney matches fall on school nights.

Then, Australia will then not play on home soil until they host New Zealand for ODIs in March, in what looms as a sign of things to come for the world’s No.1-ranked team. Under the current ICC schedule, there will be no WBBL or international women’s cricket during the school holidays in Australia for at least the next three years.

“We don’t want to be the sport that falls behind because we’re just getting it wrong,” veteran wicketkeeper-bat Beth Mooney told AAP. “We’re just pushing it uphill, because we’re in a bad timeslot and it’s a bad time of year for parents. They’re not dragging their kid out to watch a 7pm T20 on a Tuesday night or whatever it is. That’s going to stop girls getting into the game, because parents aren’t going to take them.”

Mooney’s comments come after Australia’s most-capped player Ellyse Perry expressed similar concerns earlier last month. Australian players have for a long time had some frustrations over the schedule, particularly around the same consistency in men’s cricket.

This summer has been impacted by the ICC moving the inaugural Champions’ Trophy from its original June-July slot to February. But multiple players have also expressed concerns to AAP over India being able to claim the January window for its lucrative WPL, fearing it will only expand into a larger window. This year it runs January 14 to February 7.

They are concerned the national team are at risk of being out of sight and out of mind, stunting momentum after another T20 World Cup win. One push is for more home matches to be scheduled in December around the Christmas window, with Australia to tour Sri Lanka through that period this year.

“We’re not getting crowds, it’s not marketed well. There is no big-ticket item where people go ‘the Australian women’s team play here [at this time] every year’,” Mooney said. “We want to be relatable athletes. And if we’re not front and centre of the summer it makes it pretty difficult when it’s meant to be a summer sport. We don’t need to compete with the men. They play the day-night Test at some point. We can have T20s before that. Or we can play night T20s when there is a men’s Test on.”

Australia’s coach Shelley Nitschke said it was “obviously disappointing” not to play at home in December or January, while captain Sophie Molineux argued home games in December would be “really special” for her team.

“It would also help see fans come through,” Molineux said. “I completely understand that the schedules are getting bigger and busier.”

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