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No four-day Tests on Aussie agenda

CA chief weighs in on four-day Tests and when we can expect to see Australia meet Ireland and Afghanistan in the Test arena

Australia will not be hosting any four-day Test matches and any meetings with new Test-playing nations Afghanistan and Ireland will be longer-term prospects, says Cricket Australia's chief executive.

However, CA chief James Sutherland said longer-term plans to play Test cricket's newest nations could help the Aussies prepare for assignments in England or on the subcontinent.

Ireland and Afghanistan became the 11th and 12th teams to be granted Test-playing status earlier this year. Ireland will play their first Test next May against Pakistan but Afghanistan have yet to confirm a debut Test.

Neither country has been included in the International Cricket Council's plans for a nine-team Test Championship, which will begin from July 2019, but there is scope for Tests to be arranged outside of the new structure.

Sutherland said he couldn't see Australia playing either nation before the start of the Test Championship, but confirmed he had committed to finding opportunities for Tests against Ireland and Afghanistan in the longer term.

"There's certainly nothing in the schedule for the next couple of years," Sutherland said on Friday.

"But down the track, we've made commitments to them to say that we would like to find an opportunity to play them.

"It may well be – in a logistical sense – that it may well be part of a tour match.

"Playing against Ireland might be leading into an Ashes series (in the United Kingdom), or Afghanistan are playing some of their home matches in the UAE and/or India, so there could be an opportunity to play a warm-up match of sorts against Afghanistan.

"But looking at our cycle in the next two years, I can't see us playing any of them before the Test Championship starts."

Aussies end India tour with damp squib

That scenario for Australia would mirror the approach Pakistan are taking next May, where their one-off Test, expected to be in Dublin, will be a precursor to a two-Test series in England.

The ICC also confirmed on Friday the introduction of a 13-team ODI League from 2020, featuring the 12 full (Test-playing) ICC members plus the winner of the current ICC World Cricket League Championship – a competition currently led by the Netherlands.

Each side will play four home and four away series each comprising three ODIs in the first edition of the league and will provide a direct qualification pathway to the 2023 World Cup, to be held in India.

Sutherland said the new league could present opportunities for ODI cricket to be played in smaller cities and venues across the country.

He did not go into details about potential venues, but Australia met Sri Lanka in a T20 at Geelong's Kardinia Park last summer, while international series against the likes of Bangladesh have previously been played in the Top End during the winter months.

"If you analyse the schedule, once every two years or three years we'll probably have home matches against some of those lower-ranked teams," Sutherland said.

"They will be things that we explore according to the schedule. I don't think it's foreseeable, certainly not in the first cycle or so, that we'd be scheduling those sorts of matches at the MCG or the SCG.

"There may well be opportunities to take these matches to different parts of the country.

"It depends of course on what time of year we'll be drawn to play and what fits with those countries' schedules. But we wouldn't be playing them at our big grounds and expecting massive crowds."

Sutherland also moved to confirm that although the ICC has given the green light for four-day Tests to be played on a trial basis until the 2019 World Cup – leaving international boards free to organise the shorter matches by bilateral agreement – Australia would not be participating in the experiment.

"We were supportive of the trial … I think it's about learning, it's about innovation, it's about understanding whether these sorts of things can work," he said.

"Our Test schedule over the next couple of years before the Test Championship starts has us playing against England this summer, South Africa, Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka.

I don't foresee us playing any four-day Test cricket in that window. But that's not to say we don't support the trial. We'll certainly be interested observers."