Familiarity in Asia not helping - Sutherland

James Sutherland, Cricket Australia CEO, wants to know why Australia's Test team performed so poorly in the recent Sri Lanka series despite spending more time in Asia than just about any generation of cricketers before them.

In a pointer to the lines of enquiry to be pursued following the 3-0 defeat to an unfancied opponent that cost Australia the No. 1 Test ranking, Sutherland said he was somewhat mystified as to why ever more frequent visits to India in particular had not translated into better displays in the region. The loss of the third Test in Colombo meant Australia have now lost nine Tests in Asia in a row over three series.

"If you have a look going back in time over recent years, some of our Test cricketers are playing more in India than they've ever played before," Sutherland said in Melbourne. "They're used to subcontinental conditions through their experiences in the IPL and on other tours representing Australia. These are conditions we are more familiar with perhaps than we have been in decades gone by, and it comes back to the ability to adapt. That's something I'll be interested to hear more about.

"It's probably a whole lot of different things. The critical thing is adaptability to conditions and that's what we ought to understand better. Clearly conditions here are very different to England, which are very different to what we see on the subcontinent, and to be the best team in the world, to be the No. 1 team, you need to be able to win away, and that's what we're about."

In reflecting on the conditions faced by the players, Sutherland said little more could be done in terms of pre-tour preparation, and also expressed the view that the pitches encountered at Pallekele, Galle and Colombo were more or less as had been expected. "We're certainly disappointed with the performances of the team in this Sri Lankan series and the review will tell us more but I don't think we can complain in terms of the preparation we had over there in Sri Lanka," he said.

"I don't think there would be any expectation gaps in terms of the facilities and the pitch condition we expected to find over there. I don't think things are clearly broken, but at the same time we need to get better at adapting to conditions. In different parts of the country there are pitches prepared for different situations, certainly we've got hybrid pitches that have been developed at the NCC, they're things that we're continuing to progress. But it's one thing to have those conditions and facilities, another to provide opportunities for players to do that."

Sutherland also said Australian cricket is searching for ways to ensure more of its 1.31 million participants graduate from junior programs to club teams and the levels above even as the latest survey of participation revealed the game had outstripped Australian football as the most popular sport in the country.

Another year of steady gains in 2015-16, following a similar increase in 2014-15 and an Ashes-inspired spike the season before now allows Cricket Australia to boast that there are more cricket participants than in any other game, outstripping the 1.25 million registered triers of Australian football reported by the AFL last year.

These numbers are driven largely by school-age Milo Into Cricket and Twenty20 Blast programs, with high female participation and increased engagement by diverse Australian communities also factors. However, the number of players actually registered as club or community cricketers lags some way behind at 454,657, albeit a rise of 9.5% on last year's figures.

Sutherland said that the game's custodians were looking intently for ways to ensure the stream of players running from junior and school programs to clubs and ultimately the higher echelons of the game would increase.

"It's a lot about that experience and about creating a positive learning environment and a fun environment for kids to play the sport," Sutherland said in Melbourne. "I think that's where the T20 Blast has allowed kids to bridge between entry level programs and playing what some people might call 'real cricket'. We've seen success but also sustained participation through into the teenage years. Very pleasing in these results to see growth in that area for the first time in a couple of years."

The total number of participants increased by 8.5% when lined up against that of 2015, which had itself been 9% up on 2014. However, the increase three years ago had been a more dramatic 16% following a victorious Ashes summer. Given the fate that had just befallen Australia's Test side in Sri Lanka, Sutherland did not want to draw too close a link, but acknowledged team performance and grassroots participation could certainly help one another.

"I think there were a number of things that kicked in that year, certainly that was one of the formative years in terms of the T20 Blast but also we saw significant growth in those entry level programs with the Milo Into Cricket program," he said of 2014. "What we'd like to see is those entry level programs be a continuous wave for us into the junior secondary years and see some sort of sustainable participation particularly at club level.

"In some ways they certainly do complement each other, but at the same time we've now gone down to No. 3 in the world on the Test rankings, we're still no. 1 in one-day cricket. From that perspective the profile of the game is still high and I think the aspiration of young people to play cricket at the highest level will continue to be there. In time when we come to review the Sri Lanka series we'll take a very keen interest in what the recommendations coming out of that are."