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ESPNcricinfo’s preview of the first Test between Australia and New Zealand at the Gabba

The Preview by Brydon Coverdale30-Nov-2011

Match facts

If James Pattinson makes his debut as expected, he and his brother Darren will become the first siblings in 112 years to play Test cricket for different nations•Getty Images

December 1-5, Brisbane
Start time 1000 (0000 GMT, 1100 EDT)

Big Picture

First things first: Australia are still favourites in this Test and should win the series. But New Zealand have a sniff. They haven’t won a Test in Australia in 26 years, back when Richard Hadlee was at his peak and Allan Border’s Australians were struggling at the start of their rebuilding phase. New Zealand are far from their peak right now – they nearly lost to Zimbabwe a month ago and sit eighth on the Test rankings – but Australia are not far from their mid 1980s position. They are coming off a fine victory in Johannesburg less than a fortnight ago, but at least three of the men who played in that win are out of this Test, including the Man of the Match Pat Cummins.Australia will play at least three debutants at the Gabba. David Warner will open in the absence of Shane Watson; James Pattinson is expected to share the new ball with Peter Siddle; and either Mitchell Starc or Ben Cutting will come on at first change. The captain Michael Clarke even hinted that there was a chance all four fast men might play if the pitch looked as “green and juicy” on the morning of the match as it did two days before. That could mean a rest for the offspinner Nathan Lyon, who before this week had never even visited the Gabba, let alone played there. There is also a new coach, Mickey Arthur, who has spent barely a week in the job and is still finding his feet.Not that New Zealand are much more settled. This will be the second Test for the fast bowler Doug Bracewell and the batsman Dean Brownlie, while the wicketkeeper Reece Young is also in his first year of Test cricket. Like Australia, New Zealand have a new selection panel, installed by their director of cricket, John Buchanan, a man who coached four of the opposition players during his time in charge of Australia. Their bowling coach Damien Wright is also Australian, and the players will look for advice from him on working at the Gabba, which is expected to have extra bounce compared to Allan Border Field, where three of their batsmen scored centuries during the tour match.Yes, New Zealand have a chance, perhaps the best chance they’ve had in Australia for a decade, since Stephen Fleming led them to a 0-0 draw in 2001. But Ross Taylor’s side is still learning how to win – they have won only four of their past 28 Tests – and they need everything to go right to upset the hosts.

Form guide

(most recent first)
Australia: WLDDW
New Zealand: WDLLD

In the spotlight

Two years ago, the thought of David Warner in a baggy green cap seemed as far-fetched as Australia appointing a foreign coach. How times change. Warner will make his Test debut with less than 1000 first-class runs to his name, but importantly he is in form. All three of his first-class hundreds have come this calendar year and if he stays at the crease for a session, New Zealand’s bowlers will see the total tick over at a rapid rate. Significantly, if Warner succeeds in this series, he could contribute to squeezing Ricky Ponting out of the Test line-up when Shane Watson returns from injury.On the subject of powerful left-hand batsman, the inclusion of Jesse Ryder is a major boost to New Zealand. Ryder missed the Test against Zimbabwe due to a calf strain but showed his class in the warm-up match against Australia A in Brisbane, where he was one of three centurions. New Zealand look a much more dangerous side when Ryder is fit, and having scored three hundreds, all against India, in his past ten Tests, he will be keen to prove he can have the same impact against Australia.

Pitch and conditions

Even in last year’s disastrous Ashes campaign, the Gabba remained impenetrable for Australia’s opponents. The hosts have not lost a Test in Brisbane since 1988, when Malcolm Marshall, Curtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh and Patrick Patterson bowled West Indies to victory. There is always plenty of seam and bounce at the Gabba, and captains can be tempted to send the opposition in. The forecast is for thunder and rain on the opening day, while showers could also fall on the final two days.

Team news

Australia’s only decision surrounds the make-up of their attack. Siddle will lead the pace group and is expected to be joined by the outswing bowler Pattinson and one of Cutting and Starc. However, on the day before the Test, Clarke wrote in his newspaper column that leaving out the offspinner Nathan Lyon in favour of a four-man pace attack was also a possibility. “I prefer playing a spinner and I like to bat first,” Clarke wrote, “but if conditions remain as they are, we will think very seriously about playing all four fast bowlers.”Australia (probable) 1 David Warner, 2 Phillip Hughes, 3 Usman Khawaja, 4 Ricky Ponting, 5 Michael Clarke (capt), 6 Michael Hussey, 7 Brad Haddin (wk), 8 Peter Siddle, 9 James Pattinson, 10 Nathan Lyon, 11 Mitchell Starc / Ben Cutting.New Zealand are likely to make just one change from the side that played in the tour match, with Daniel Vettori set to come in for Trent Boult.New Zealand (probable) 1 Martin Guptill, 2 Brendon McCullum, 3 Kane Williamson, 4 Ross Taylor (capt), 5 Jesse Ryder, 6 Dean Brownlie, 7 Daniel Vettori, 8 Reece Young (wk), 9 Doug Bracewell, 10 Tim Southee, 11 Chris Martin.

Stats & trivia

• Australia will have at least three Test debutants, bringing to at least nine the number of baggy greens handed out in 2011. The last time so many debutants played in a calendar year was during the World Series Cricket days, in 1978.
• If Pattinson debuts, he and his brother Darren, who represented England, will become the first siblings to play Test cricket for different nations in 112 years
• New Zealand’s tense recent win against Zimbabwe was their fourth victory in 28 Tests. The other wins in that time have come against Bangladesh (twice) and Pakistan.
• In their past four series against Ausralia, New Zealand have lost eight Tests and drawn one. Their last win against Australia came in 1993.

Quotes

“The extra pace, bounce and movement the Gabba can generate will give our fast bowlers every chance of making a significant impression”

“We’re just building quietly. I feel we’ve gathered a little bit of confidence from that first trip to Zimbabwe, when we were together nearly a month, then coming here after some good performances in first-class cricket at home.”

England had plenty of reasons to smile after a strong second day against South Australia when most of their main men contributed

ESPNcricinfo staff12-Nov-2010
Scorecard
Graeme Swann shut down South Australia’s tail with four wickets•Getty Images

England had plenty of reasons to smile after a strong second day against South Australia when most of their main men contributed. Graeme Swann’s second four-wicket collection of the trip helped finish off the hosts for 221 after James Anderson had removed three of the top six, while Stuart Broad and Steven Finn also had some success.Andrew Strauss finished the day with a rollicking 56 as England reached 0 for 94, a lead of 67, and the side was also boosted by Alastair Cook being not out on 37. Cook, the vice-captain, has struggled in the early stages of the trip and is desperately chasing a big score to feel settled before the opening Test on November 25. Strauss has no such worries and bashed three sixes and five fours, with his fifty coming at almost a run a ball.Swann was wicket-less for his first 17 overs but then captured four victims, giving up 68 runs from 22.4 overs. Aiden Blizzard (49) went sweeping, Tim Lang hit to mid-on, Ben Edmondson was lbw and Peter George, the No.11, was stumped to end the innings.Rain delayed the start of play by an hour and South Australia were in difficulty soon after resuming at 0 for 26. James Smith nicked Broad to Matt Prior the ball before Anderson had Daniel Harris caught by Jonathan Trott at square leg. Trott later left for treatment on his shoulder after jarring it attempting a catch on the boundary, but returned to the field in good health.Finn continues to improve and delivered a strong spell before lunch in which he forced Callum Ferguson to miscue a pull shot on 35, and he returned later in the day to bowl Jake Haberfield. Anderson watched Michael Klinger cut hard to Kevin Pietersen at point and followed up by clipping Graham Manou’s glove on the way to Strauss at first slip.

Makhaya Ntini claimed the big wicket of Andrew Strauss for 46, and the left-arm spinner Paul Harris capped an excellent spell by bowling his close friend and former Under-19 team-mate, Jonathan Trott, for 28

The Bulletin by Andrew Miller18-Dec-2009Close South Africa 418 (Kallis 120, Swann 5-110) and 9 for 1 (Smith 6*, Harris 2*) lead England 356 (Swann 81, Harris 5-123) by 71 runs

Scorecard and ball-by-ball detailsGraeme Swann transformed England’s fortunes with his highest Test score•PA Photos

Graeme Swann put his top-order colleagues to shame with a rollicking innings of 85 from 81 balls – the highest score by an England No. 9 for 38 years – as England fought back from a desperate mid-afternoon collapse to close the third day with their fortunes in the first Test restored. In the four overs available before the close, James Anderson extracted Ashwell Prince for a duck with his sixth delivery, to ensure that – despite a first-innings deficit of 62 – the momentum had shifted firmly to the visiting camp.Such a stunning finale to the day could not have been envisaged at tea, when South Africa’s stranglehold on the contest appeared to be absolute. From a promising overnight position of 88 for 1, England had slipped and slithered to 238 for 7, with the spinner Paul Harris applying a four-wicket tourniquet with his choking left-arm line. It was a scoreline that became even worse three overs after the break, when Stuart Broad was adjudged lbw to JP Duminy after a referral that appeared, in Broad’s opinion, to have been instigated by the South African dressing-room.But by the close, that potential controversy had become a distant blip in the memory, thanks to a surging stand of 106 in 23 overs between Swann and Anderson, a ninth-wicket performance that beat the previous best by England against South Africa – 99 between Andrew Flintoff and Steve Harmison at The Oval in 2003, another match in which England battled back from a seemingly futile position.Swann, who batted with an abandon that brought no less a figure than IT Botham to mind, clattered 10 fours and two sixes in the course of his innings, and even unfurled a brace of switch hits that Kevin Pietersen could hardly have bettered. Anderson, meanwhile, walloped Harris over midwicket for his first six in Test cricket, and it wasn’t until an attack of cramp undermined his effectiveness that he chipped Makhaya Ntini to a diving Morne Morkel at mid-off.Up until that moment (which was delayed while Swann cheekily called for a review to check whether there had been a no-ball) there was nothing that South Africa could do to stem the onslaught, and Smith gathered his errant charges together to lay down the law during another delay for an unsuccessful referral. His biggest mistake, however, was to call for the second new ball in the 81st over, with England still wading through treacle on 242 for 8.Suddenly, the extra hardness, coupled with the extra pace of Ntini and Morkel, encouraged Swann and Anderson to have a dart at a counterattack. Anderson signalled the charge with a first-ball punch through the covers for four, Swann swatted Ntini off his eyebrows for six, and by the time Smith retreated back to his spinner, 40 tempo-changing runs had poured forth in seven overs.Suddenly there was no holding either batsman back. Harris was hoisted into the midwicket stand for Swann’s second six, then pummelled twice through the covers as he flipped around in his stance to take on the switch hit. His half-century came up from 47 balls with a sweep through fine leg, and even the rare shots that he failed to middle still skidded off the edge through third man. In the end, with only Graham Onions for company, Swann took on Harris one too many times, and picked out deep midwicket to end a truly spectacular knock.That wicket, fittingly, was Harris’s fifth in the innings, and it was due reward for a performance in which he had lived up to his unlikely billing as the No. 9-ranked bowler in the world. Harris does not look the likeliest destroyer in the South African set-up, and with his unattractive round-arm action and a degree of spin reminiscent of the much-lampooned Ashley Giles, he is a cricketer who is destined to be under-rated. But that suited his purposes just fine for today, as a host of England batsmen lined up to be prised out on a dry and dusty wicket.Of Harris’s first four victims, only Paul Collingwood – who grafted his way to a gutsy half-century before being caught at slip by a sharply turning delivery in the same over – could say he was undone by a cracking delivery. The remainder were ground down by his unyielding accuracy, not least Ian Bell, who padded up to a straight delivery to be bowled for 5, a crass error of judgment brought his place in the side under yet more untimely scrutiny.England’s day began inauspiciously when Andrew Strauss, their overnight stalwart on 44 not out, was bowled by Ntini for the addition of just two more runs. There was little that Strauss could do about the ball that extracted him – a shooter on off stump that scuttled at shin height beneath his defences – and as the punters in the stands swarmed to the bar to claim the free pints that had been promised if Ntini struck in his 100th Test, South Africa piled on the pressure and reduced the scoring rate to a crawl.Morkel and Ntini maintained excellent discipline as England’s other overnight batsman, Jonathan Trott, ground out 10 runs in the morning from 61 deliveries, including a deflected four through third man. It was his former Under-19 colleague Harris, however, who finally ended his vigil, as Trott lost his patience and stormed out of the crease to take on the midwicket boundary, only for Harris to drift a well-directed arm-ball through the gate and into his leg stump.Harris could have doubled his personal tally in his very next over, when he skidded a drifter millimetres over the top of Kevin Pietersen’s middle stump. Though Pietersen did his best to keep his cool thereafter, the sluggish conditions did not suit his combative style and, having concentrated on working the ball through the leg-side for much of his 79-ball stay, he took on Morkel with a booming cover-drive, and inside-edged a good-length delivery into his leg stump.That brought Bell to the crease at No. 6 – a position with which he has been comfortable in the past, but the situation did not suit his mindset one iota. He had nudged along to 5 from 14 balls when Harris served up an unthreatening off-stump length delivery, and to widespread astonishment, Bell played for non-existent turn and allowed the delivery to crash straight into his middle stump.It was an ugly way to go, reminiscent of Adam Hollioake’s aberration against Shane Warne in 1997, but in the circumstances, Matt Prior’s departure was scarcely any better. A man more used to counterattacking cameos had been pinned down for 10 overs and 34 balls when, on 4, he sized up an ambitious sweep and plopped a simple chance straight into the hands of Friedel de Wet at deep midwicket.In the course of England’s meltdown, only Collingwood looked remotely comfortable with the conditions and the tempo of the reply, and he completed an excellent half-century from 87 balls when he swept Harris fine for four. One delivery later, however, he was on his way, as Harris tweaked one off his edge for Jacques Kallis to complete a simple low catch at slip. With his demise, it seemed that England’s goose was cooked. But Swann, thrillingly, had other ideas.

The total attendance over five days surpassed the previous record of 350,534 set at the MCG in 1937

Alex Malcolm30-Dec-2024A new attendance record for a Test match in Australia has been set with more than 373,691 passing through the gates at the MCG across the five days of the fourth Test between Australia and India, surpassing the previous mark of 350,534 set in 1937.Cricket Australia [CA] confirmed early on Monday that 51,371 had already come in for the first session of the fifth day to break the record. That crowd had swelled to a final tally of 74,362 by late in the afternoon.The crowd tally meant that more people have attended the 2024 MCG Boxing Day Test than had seen a Sir Donald Bradman-led Australia play England in January 1937 at the same venue, which was played over six days.The crowds have been absolutely extraordinary for this Test match with daily tallies of 87,242, 85,147, 83,073, 43,867 and 74,362. A day five crowd exceeding day four is unheard of with the Melbourne Cricket Club, who run the MCG, underestimating the number on day five.They opened Yarra Park outside the ground for general public parking on day five, which is a rarity. But they only had one gate open and it caused a significant traffic choke point prior to play with a number of fans late to get into the ground.The record numbers follow the huge crowds India attracted at the MCG at the 2022 T20 World Cup when 90,293 saw India play Pakistan and 82,507 watched India play Zimbabwe.

Players to get three-year deals, along with increased monthly retainers and a percentage of the PCB’s revenue

Danyal Rasool27-Sep-2023The PCB and the Pakistan men’s team players have reached a landmark agreement on central contracts, ending several months of deadlock and uncertainty. For the first time in Pakistan, three-year contracts have been put in place – rather than the standard 12 months – along with a significant increase in player earnings, as well as a fixed share of revenue from the PCB’s earnings from the ICC.The agreement comes nearly three months after the most recent central contracts expired on June 30. Ever since, Pakistan’s players had been playing without receiving any retainers or other financial compensation. ESPNcricinfo understands the PCB offered the players the option to continue the payment structure of the old contracts until the new deal was struck, an offer the players turned down.As such, there was an impasse between the two parties, with the Test series in Sri Lanka, an ODI series against Afghanistan, and the Asia Cup all played by players without active contracts. It looked inevitable that Pakistan would play the World Cup without contracts too, with the captain Babar Azam offering no indication that an agreement was close during his pre-departure press conference.Related

• Shaheen Afridi in talks with Canada's Global T20 after pulling out of the Hundred

• Usama Mir's predicament underlines the need for a Pakistan players' association

• Cricket Australia chief: Context vital for bilateral ODIs

• Pakistan players and PCB close to reaching common ground on new contracts

• Pakistan players set to receive 'historic' hike in new contracts

While the players and the board were far apart in terms of what they were willing to agree to for much of the last few weeks, the deal that has been struck is more generous for players than any in recent history. The monthly retainer was never really a sticking point, with Category A players receiving PKR 4,500,000 (USD 15,590), a more than four-fold increase over the previous year. The PCB had initially offered Category A players the option to play just one T20 league aside from the PSL, but agreed to allow all centrally-contracted players two additional leagues regardless of category of contract.By far the biggest sticking point, though, was the possibility of revenue sharing. The players demanded a percentage of the revenue the ICC pays annually to the PCB, something the board was reluctant to agree to. In the end, the parties agreed to the players receiving a 3% share of revenue, which amounts to around USD 1 million (the PCB is set to earn USD 34 million per year from next year as a share of ICC revenue). This will be paid to players over and above their monthly retainers and match fees, which are also set to increase by 50% in Tests, 25% in ODIs and 12.5% in T20Is. While it is a far cry from Cricket Australia’s 27.5% revenue-sharing deal with its centrally-contracted players, or the BCCI’s 26%, the Pakistan players were keen to agree to any percentage, however small, to set a precedent.”This deal signifies our commitment to improving the financial health of our players, acknowledging their hard work and dedication to the game,” Zaka Ashraf, the PCB management committee chairperson, said. “We firmly believe that a financially secure and motivated team is more likely to excel on the field.”As we move forward, the entire nation stands behind these players to do well in the upcoming ICC Men’s World Cup. We have faith in their abilities, and we are confident that they will make the nation proud with their outstanding performances.”The main reason the players managed to get the PCB to agree to most of their terms was a collective bargaining position. It is understood the four players leading the negotiations – Babar, Mohammad Rizwan, Shaheen Shah Afridi and Shadab Khan – put up a united front for these talks, and retained the trust of the rest of the team to negotiate on everyone’s behalf.”It is by far a historic deal,” Babar said. “I am extremely happy and satisfied that we have reached an agreement with the PCB. It has been a lengthy and, at times, challenging negotiation process, but I believe we have reached a fair and beneficial agreement for both parties.”The decision to extend these contracts to three years also provides all parties with medium to long-term certainty. This does not mean all players currently offered central contracts will keep them for the next 36 months, or even that they cannot be demoted. The contracts will be subject to annual review, with players potentially coming in or dropping out, but the infrastructure and framework of the contracts is set to remain unchanged till 2026.Pakistan arrived in Hyderabad in India earlier today, where they play their warm-up games against New Zealand on September 29 and Australia on October 3. Their first game of the World Cup is also in Hyderabad, against the Netherlands on October 6.

List of centrally-contracted players

Category A: Babar Azam, Mohammad Rizwan and Shaheen Shah Afridi
Category B: Fakhar Zaman, Haris Rauf, Imam-ul-Haq, Mohammad Nawaz, Naseem Shah and Shadab Khan
Category C: Imad Wasim and Abdullah Shafique
Category D: Fahim Ashraf, Hasan Ali, Iftikhar Ahmed, Ihsanullah, Mohammad Haris, Mohammad Wasim Jr, Saim Ayub, Salman Ali Agha, Sarfaraz Ahmad, Saud Shakeel, Shahnawaz Dahani, Shan Masood, Usama Mir and Zaman Khan