Australia-South Africa has been compromised

In the Age, Brendan McArdle writes of his concern at the decision to delay this year's Perth Test to allow a window for the inaugural Champions League.

Consecutive Melbourne and Sydney Tests are a feature of the cricketing calendar, but this is something else again. There are only four days between Perth and Melbourne and three between Melbourne and Sydney. How can Brett Lee be expected to come through that unscathed? How will emerging South African pace bowler Dale Steyn cope? Australia has got through these situations in the past only because of a certain leg-spinner.

The big losers will be the South Africans, who, like all touring teams, will not have the player options available to the locals. Cricket Australia will justify its decision by pointing to an almost identical itinerary on South Africa's previous tour here three years ago. But that series, as this one surely will be, was hopelessly compromised; in the end Ricky Ponting helped himself to twin centuries in Sydney as the South Africans desperately searched for fit bowlers.