Frustration over Ashes schedule

The decision to allocate the opening Test of the 2015 Ashes series to Wales and exclude venues in England’s north has triggered partisan debate on social media and in the UK press more than a year before cricket’s oldest rivalry resumes.

The five-match series will begin in Cardiff followed by Tests at Lord’s (London), Edgbaston (Birmingham), Trent Bridge (Nottingham) and The Oval (London), with northern venues Headingley (Leeds), Old Trafford (Manchester) and Chester-le-Street (Durham) missing out.

The Mirror newspaper led the outrage over the decision not to stage an Ashes Test north of the Midlands by quoting former Lancashire chief executive Jim Cumbes who described the fixturing announced yesterday as “crazy”.

“To not have an Ashes Test in the North is ludicrous, there should be a better geographical split,” he told The Mirror.

Former England and Yorkshire captain Michael Vaughan took to Twitter to describe Cardiff’s Sophia Gardens as an “ok venue” but expressed his surprise it had been selected for the series opener after it had lost the right to host a Test against the West Indies in 2012 for financial reasons.

Ex-England and Lancashire batsman turned television commentator David Lloyd tweeted: “I find it incredible, the choosing of venues for Ashes Tests #mindboggling.”

Both Vaughan and Lloyd publicly wondered if England’s team management, including coach Peter Moores and captain Alastair Cook, were entitled to any input in the final decision as to where the Ashes Tests would be played in order to give them the best chance of regaining the urn.

This prompted current England fast bowler Stuart Broad, who plays for Nottingham, to tweet: “Can't do? Or we'd be starting at Trent Bridge, our record here is amazing”.

England has won its past five Test matches at the Nottingham home ground, which was the venue for the opening Test of the 2013 Ashes series.

The grounds at which the Australians have enjoyed their most pronounced dominance in recent years – Headingley (where they have won four and lost one Ashes Test since 1989) and Old Trafford (won three and lost none) – are absent from the Ashes schedule.

However, Stephen Brenkley writing in the UK’s Independent claimed that neither of those venues, along with Durham’s home ground which also hosted a Test during the 2013 series, were actively in the running to host a Test against Australia next year.

“Manchester decided to opt out believing it would not be successful after staging a match last year and Yorkshire, who do not yet have catering rights at Headingley, decided it would be too expensive,” he wrote.

“Durham, struggling to make ends meet, were not in the running this time.

“It is a huge pity and a real concern that the old order seems to have shifted so much but it reflects too the hard commercial realities of the modern professional game.”

It also reflects the fact that the England and Wales Cricket Board has a surfeit of Test match venues from which choose each summer, a list that has grown in recent years to include ‘new’ venues such as those in Cardiff, Durham and Southampton.

A spokesman for the England and Wales Cricket Board told the UK’s Telegraph newspaper that while England team management was consulted about where Tests would be allocated, players had no direct input.

“The venues are decided by the Major Match Group, which works independently of the ECB,” the spokesman told The Telegraph.

"They use a balanced scorecard, and consider a variety of factors, like operational ability, what the venues do for the community, geography... (and) Cardiff's staging of the 2009 Ashes opening Test was a great success.

“In regard to the northern venues, we do try to allocate Tests even-handedly over a four-year cycle.

“It might be that staging a Test versus India, for example, might be as lucrative for some venues as an Ashes Test.”

The final word on the scheduling of the 2015 Ashes series might well belong to former Australia vice-captain Adam Gilchrist, who responded to Vaughan’s tweet about Cardiff staging the first Test by referring to Australia’s failed campaign in England of a decade earlier.

That was when all-rounder Andrew Symonds had a night out in the Welsh city immediately before a one-day international against Bangladesh, from which he was a last-minute withdrawal because he was deemed unfit to play and which his team went on to famously lose.

“Glad Symo is retired!!” Gilchrist tweeted in response to Vaughan’s observation.