Dhaka- Cricket Australia (CA) has cancelled hosting Bangladesh for two-Test and three-ODI series under ICC’s Future Tours Program (FTP) scheduled to be held in August and September 2018.CA showed financial reasons as the reason, arguing that it no longer makes sense to play top-end matches, usually played in north Queensland and the Northern Territory, out of season because they get “swamped” by the major football codes, reports espncrickinfo on Wednesday.
The trip was scrapped because Australian free-to-air broadcasters are understood to be uninterested in televising the series in the middle of the football season. CA communicated to the BCB that the tour was not ‘commercially viable’.
The call to scrap the tour was made before CA finalised an A$1 billion television and digital rights deal with the Fox Sports and Seven networks. It is not clear whether or not Fox was offered the chance to broadcast the series on its pay television network.
One of the alternative options discussed was Australia touring Bangladesh after the 2019 World Cup.BCB chief executive Nizamuddin Chowdhury said, “We have proposed some options and are now waiting for their response.”
CA’s chief executive James Sutherland explained the cancellation was related to the timing of the series, plus the fact that apart from India, England and South Africa, the rest of the world’s cricket nations, including Bangladesh, only play Australia sporadically, particularly during the southern summer.
“The way in which everything works in cricket is that it’s really at the home team’s discretion to work things out as to how much they want to host and what they want to host,” Sutherland had told.UNB
