Adelaide: Cricket Australia boss Todd Greenberg has revealed he is open to finding ways for England players to play in future Sheffield Shield seasons to help provide a better grounding in Australian conditions for Ashes combatants.
Ben Stokes’ touring team slipped to a 2-0 Ashes series deficit within six days of play in Perth and Brisbane, leaving the tourists in real danger of giving up the urn in Adelaide this week in the minimum three Test matches required.
Ian Botham playing for Queensland.Credit: Brett Preston
After this masthead reported that England’s planners had rejected the offer of a tour game against Australia A on a major ground like the MCG in the lead-up to the Perth Test, Greenberg said he had spoken at length with his ECB equivalent Richard Gould about ensuring more thorough preparation for future tours.
But Greenberg also added that he was willing to explore the prospect of England players taking part in the Shield competition, which has seldom seen foreign players in recent seasons. England last won an Ashes Test match in Australia in January 2011.
“History says it’s been done before. I think we have to have an open mind to it,” Greenberg said on Wednesday. “As the global world changes for cricket, this concept that we lock down our own paths and our own systems without some sort of broader knowledge of what’s happening around you [is wrong]. So I’d have an open mind to that.
Loading
“I was with Richard Gould for those first two Tests, we started talking about the next Ashes series and he started to talk to me about what our expectations might be and what our desires and wants are, what we’ve got before and after it. There’s a spirit of dialogue that we would work together on that, and vice versa, that we can help him out.”
Overseas players largely disappeared from the Shield after the advent of the Big Bash League in 2011 meant that the domestic first-class competition was essentially fixed as a research and development league for the Australian Test team.
In earlier decades the likes of Viv Richards, Ian Botham, Imran Khan, Joel Garner, Gary Sobers and Barry Richards took part in the Shield. Younis Khan and Andy Flower both played seasons for South Australia in the 2000s.
