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October 7, 2026 \u2014 5:00am<\/p>\n
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Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n AAA<\/p>\n Cricket great Ellyse Perry has called for Australia\u2019s women to be given a permanent place in the heart of the home summer, lamenting the absence of international cricket around Christmas and the new year.<\/p>\n Australia begin their international season on Friday at Allan Border Field in Brisbane with the first of three one-day internationals against Bangladesh, before three T20s against New Zealand.<\/p>\n Australia will play six white-ball matches in 14 days, finishing on October 22, but will not play another international until an ODI series against New Zealand in March. After that comes the Women\u2019s Ashes in England in June.<\/p>\n It means Australia, the world\u2019s No.1 side in both white-ball formats, will not play an international fixture during the traditional home summer.<\/p>\n \u201cOur exposure of playing at home is fairly limited,\u201d Perry told this masthead. \u201cI think it would be amazing for us to continue to grow the game in Australia by playing in front of home fans at the height of Australian cricket summer.\u201d<\/p>\n Scheduling is becoming complicated in the women\u2019s game. The Women\u2019s Big Bash League [WBBL] runs from October 29 to December 5, while the Women\u2019s Premier League [WPL] \u2013 the female equivalent of the Indian Premier League \u2013 is scheduled from January 14 to February 7.<\/p>\n Australian women\u2019s cricket fixturesOctober 9 \u2014 Bangladesh (ODI), 2.50pm AEDT, Allan Border Field, BrisbaneOctober 11 \u2014 Bangladesh (ODI), 2.50pm AEDT, Allan Border Field, BrisbaneOctober 14 \u2014 Bangladesh (ODI), 2.50pm AEDT, Allan Border Field, BrisbaneOctober 18 \u2014 New Zealand (T20I), 7.15pm AEDT, North Sydney OvalOctober 20 \u2014 New Zealand (T20I), 7.15pm AEDT, North Sydney OvalOctober 22 \u2014 New Zealand (T20I), 7.15pm AEDT, North Sydney Oval<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Australia\u2019s men return from their three-Test tour of South Africa to play three ODIs and five T20s against England from November 13, before a four-Test series against New Zealand from December 9 until as late as January 8.<\/p>\n Last summer, Australia\u2019s women began a multi-format series against India in mid-February. While Cricket Australia would like to stage more women\u2019s internationals during the summer, it is also reliant on the availability of other nations.<\/p>\n \u201cThe WPL has crept into the January window, which for me is the height of the Australian summer,\u201d Perry said. \u201cFor there not to be an opportunity for the Australian team to play in that window feels really sad in a lot of senses.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s an amazing privilege to play overseas in different countries \u2026 but I don\u2019t think anything resonates quite the same as being able to represent your country in front of your own fans.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s going to be really important going forward to be proactive about how we see the game, how we schedule it, and not going down the same path or follow the same blueprint as men\u2019s cricket.<\/p>\n \u201cThe entire Australian [women\u2019s] team would love to play in the height of an Australian summer. It\u2019s when everyone turns their mind to cricket. There are some annual features there that people always looking forward to – whether that\u2019s a Boxing Day Test or New Year\u2019s Test.<\/p>\n \u201cSomething like that doesn\u2019t exist for the women\u2019s team \u2026 and so it\u2019s really increasingly hard year-to-year if it\u2019s a little bit patchworky as to when we play. That\u2019s not to say there isn\u2019t effort to do that. It\u2019s just such a convoluted schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n Related Article Perry also believes the WBBL has significant potential as Australian cricket remains divided on the merits of privatisation in Big Bash franchises.<\/p>\n \u201cThe opportunity that [privatisation] presents is one that I really hope we\u2019re able to make the most of,\u201d Perry said \u201cWomen\u2019s cricket represents a relatively untapped source of revenue for the sport. It\u2019s not unreasonable to say the WBBL is probably the leading franchise competition in the world for women. I think sometimes that potentially gets lost on the Australian public \u2026 because we probably haven\u2019t had the platform or the ability to really market and grow the competition in a way that it potentially deserves.<\/p>\n \u201cPrivatisation and investment in that gives us a tremendous opportunity to be creative and to do things differently to innovate for the WBBL.\u201d<\/p>\n At 35, Perry has been an international cricketer for more than half her life. She was part of Australia\u2019s recent T20 World Cup-winning side and was named by ESPN earlier this year as the greatest women\u2019s cricketer of the 21st century.<\/p>\n Her form remains excellent and she is enjoying the game as much as ever.<\/p>\n How long can she keep going?<\/p>\n \u201cI find so much joy and fulfilment in what I do,\u201d Perry said. \u201cFor as long \u2026 as I am contributing to the team, I\u2019d love to be involved. I guess everything\u2019s finite and impermanent, so it will come to an end at some point. But yeah, I\u2019m not really sure when.\u201d<\/p>\n News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport sent every Friday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n Save<\/p>\n You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n![\"Australian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/aa9bf92ab7909e0d75dac96881590a1e58c53b3c.jpeg\")
Australian cricket legend Ellyse Perry. Getty Images<\/p>\n![\"Cricket](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/b483bd4cf300a08c72ff847196c6daa381b4ed25.jpeg\")
Cricket Australia chair Mike Baird and CEO Todd Greenberg pose with Sophie Molineux, Pat Cummins, Ellyse Perry and Travis Head. Getty Images for Cricket Australia<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1f6da13752c29b3fa1f79b2dc7924bf6eab7c11a.jpeg\")
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Tom Decent<\/a> is the chief sports writer for The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"October 7, 2026 \u2014 5:00am Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":918464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-918463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=918463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/918464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=918463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=918463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=918463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}