The absence of a men’s Ashes Test in the north of England in 2027 is a direct result of the decision to switch a match from Hampshire to Headingley for Australia’s last visit in 2023.<\/p>\n
Next year, Hampshire’s home in Southampton will host an Ashes Test for the first time, with both Old Trafford in Manchester and Headingley in Leeds missing out.<\/p>\n
As first reported by the Guardian, Southampton was due to host the Australians in 2023, only for the match to be changed. <\/p>\n
Hampshire were awarded more than \u00a31m in compensation by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), then subsequently given an Ashes Test in 2027.<\/p>\n
Neither Hampshire nor the ECB have commented.<\/p>\n
The Ashes venues for 2023 were announced in 2018, when the ECB was chaired by Colin Graves.<\/p>\n
Graves, the current Yorkshire chair, held the same position at Headingley prior to his time with the ECB.<\/p>\n
He told the Guardian he was not involved in the allocation of matches. <\/p>\n
“I always left the room when their recommendations were discussed by the board. I was not involved,” he said.<\/p>\n
The method for allocating matches in the 2023 series was under the ECB’s old, ‘competitive tender’ process, where venues essentially made financial bids to host fixtures.<\/p>\n
The governing body has since moved to a rotation system, which it believes is fairer.<\/p>\n
The rotation system was backed by the 18 first-class counties and Marylebone Cricket Club, and was used to allocate major matches up to 2031.<\/p>\n
From 2031, the ECB plans to host at least one men’s Ashes Test in the north of England, with Southampton receiving a men’s Test in every other Ashes series.<\/p>\n
Both Headingley and Old Trafford have hosted a men’s Test in the two previous home Ashes series.<\/p>\n
Next year, the most northerly men’s Ashes Test will take place at Trent Bridge in Nottingham, while Headingley will host the sole women’s Ashes Test.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The absence of a men’s Ashes Test in the north of England in 2027 is a direct result…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":767381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-767380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=767380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/767381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}