A new-look women’s domestic season will get underway in September, while the new T20 league will provide the ideal warm-up to WBBL|10
The new women’s domestic T20 tournament will be staged across Sydney and Adelaide in the lead-up to Weber WBBL|10 in October and will be dubbed the ‘T20 Spring Challenge’, Cricket Australia has confirmed.
CA today revealed the full domestic schedule for the 2024-25 summer, including both the T20 Spring Challenge and the 2024-25 edition of the Women’s National Cricket League.
The new nine-team T20 competition – created to ensure there would be no overall reduction in women’s domestic games following the shortening of the WBBL – features teams aligned with the eight Big Bash clubs along with the ACT.
View the full T20 Spring Challenge schedule here
View the full 2024-25 WNCL schedule here
Australia’s leading male players will have a rare chance to pit their red-ball skills against one another, with the Sheffield Shield’s critical role in priming Test stars for their bid to wrestle the Border-Gavaskar Trophy off India revealed today.
Cricket Australia has announced four Shield rounds will be played before the Test summer opener against India on November 22, including the first two in a window free of any overlapping international commitments.
Unlike the three previous years that have seen white-ball World Cups run into November, there is clear air in Australia’s international program through the entire month of October when the Sheffield Shield season gets underway following an opening blitz of domestic 50-over matches.
Australia’s limited-overs tour of the United Kingdom ends on September 29. The national side are then not back in action until a three-match ODI and T20I home series against Pakistan from November 4-18.
None of Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc or Steve Smith have played a single match in any of the previous three Shield seasons, while other leading Australian players have also seen windows to turn out for their states shrink amid cricket’s global schedule squeeze.
Domestic access to major international grounds improves as the season progresses. Only two of the first 12 Shield games will be hosted by a current Test ground (MCG and Adelaide Oval to host), while the first 11 one-dayers are all being played at secondary venues.
But from mid-November there is a solid run of matches at the MCG (which hosts a second Shield match before Christmas, plus the Australia A-India A game), the SCG, Adelaide Oval and the Gabba (three Shield matches each for the season) either side of the blockbuster men’s and women’s international fixtures.
Perth’s Optus Stadium is not hosting any domestic cricket outside of the KFC BBL with WA hosting all their games at the WACA Ground, likewise with Tasmania at Blundstone Arena.