SYDNEY — Australia will play two day-night Tests against South Africa and Pakistan next southern summer in a revamp of home international scheduling, a report said Thursday.
Following the success of the inaugural pink-ball Test against New Zealand in Adelaide last year, Cricket Australia will stage two more day-night Tests against touring nations South Africa and Pakistan, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Australia will face the South Africans under lights in Adelaide and Pakistan at Brisbane’s Gabba ground, the newspaper said.
Cricket Australia is expected to finalize its international and domestic schedules for the 2016-17 season later this month.
Under scheduling changes, the Herald said the Gabba would forfeit its customary hosting rights to the first Test of the season and instead host the opening match of the Australia-Pakistan series in December.
The newspaper said the season would kick off with a Test at Perth’s WACA Ground between Australia and South Africa in November.
The series against the Proteas will then head to Hobart, which has been retained as a Test venue amid competition from Canberra, before wrapping up under lights at Adelaide Oval.
Australia will then meet Pakistan in the day-night Test in Brisbane and complete the series with matches in Melbourne and Sydney over Christmas-New Year.
Broad backs Stokes
Ben Stokes can recover to become one of England’s best ever players after his World Twenty20 nightmare when he was hit for four sixes in the last over of the final, teammate Stuart Broad said Wednesday.
England looked on course for victory in Sunday’s showpiece against the West Indies before Carlos Brathwaite sent the ball soaring over the boundary rope four times in a row to clinch a dramatic win in Kolkata’s Eden Gardens.
Stokes was left crestfallen on the pitch as the West Indians celebrated wildly. He could, however, emerge a better player for the chastening experience, according to Broad.
“This will play a big part in making him a very strong character,” Broad, the world’s top-ranked Test bowler, told the BBC.
Broad suffered a similarly embarrassing over at the 2007 World T20 when he was hit for six sixes by India’s Yuvraj Singh.
His advice to Stokes was to analyze what went wrong and then forget about it for the rest of his career.
