The three week Australian tennis ‘season’ (like the Australian golf season except hotter) climaxes with the Australian Open finals on the weekend of January 28-29.
Australian hopes rest on the much-maligned man-child Nick Kyrgios whom good judges (Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray) suggest has the game to become a world No1 and major championship winner.
“[Kyrgios] is a player who has an unbelievable potential,” said Nadal. “He has focus on himself, and can become world No1 and win a Grand Slam.”
Few doubt Kyrgios’s ability to belt premium Wilsons across a 3 1/2 foot net with a Yonex EZONE DR 98 at extremely high speeds and odd angles. Kyrgios has huge game. What’s in doubt – perhaps massive doubt – is his ability to behave with more maturity than a spoiled and sulky 14-year-old heir to a European principality.
In cricket, Australia will play the third Test match against Pakistan (Jan 3-7) followed by a five-match one-day series against the same opponent (Jan 13-26). The Big Bash League will run concurrently and conclude January 28 before it’s across the ditch where Australia play three ODIs against New Zealand (Jan 30-Feb 5).
Then Australia will field two (2) international teams when Australia plays a three-match series against Sri Lanka (Feb 17-22) before Australia (another one) plays India in the first Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy at Pune (Feb 23-27). Because that’s how things in the international bartering and mutual back-scratching of international cricket scheduling work.
In the Tests, Indian spinner Ravi Ashwin should be the pivotal man of the series given he’s the second quickest ever to take 200 wickets – behind Clarrie Grimmett, but in front of Dennis Lillee, Waqar Younis Dale Steyn.
Meanwhile Australia was horribly found out at against the spin of Sri Lanka’s podgy 38-year-old left-arm orthodox man Rangana Herath. Granted the man has 351 Test wickets. But Anil Kumble he isn’t. Matt Renshaw, Peter Handscomb, Usman Khawaja and Nic Maddinson (if he makes it back into the fold) have never played Test cricket against India – much less in India.
In four Tests in India in 2013 David Warner scored 195 runs at 24. Steve Smith is the outlier, Australia’s AB De Villiers. Mitchell Starc will get some reverse swing and Josh Hazlewood will toil on in – quick enough and good enough. But Nathan Lyon seems to bowl the same seed time after time while Stephen O’Keefe just seems next in line. Things do not bode well.
Matters appear brighter for women’s sport, particularly Australian rules football which kicks off its inaugural, televised eight-team women’s AFL competition on February 3rd with, you beauty, Carlton versus Collingwood. Matches run over four 15-minute quarters, with 16 players a side and a six-woman bench. There’ll be seven rounds and a grand final on March 25th. And you should really catch a game if you can, it’s open footy, and entertaining.
Australia’s gold medal-winning women’s sevens team will run about in the super-hot Sydney Sevens (Feb 3-5) with Charlotte Caslick, Ellia Green and Alicia Quirk looking to capitalise on the momentum that made them Olympic champions and stars. Andy Friend’s men’s team disappointing in the Olympics but only narrowly lost to New Zealand in the final in 2016.
The final round of the National Basketball League takes place Feb 9-12 before a four team finals series. A new netball season (from Feb 23) will pit Collingwood- and GWS Giants-backed teams against the likes of Sydney Swifts and Melbourne Vixens.
The Super rugby season kicks off (Feb 23) with Melbourne Rebels hosting Auckland Blues at AAMI Stadium. Elsewhere Reds host Sharks, Waratahs host Force while ACT Brumbies travel to Canterbury for a night with the Crusaders.
All pretty fair and entertaining contests. Yet the tournament remains in something of a flux. Ratings, crowds, mentions in the media, are all trending downwards, and there’s no indication things will change. Star players are drawn to Europe, the Western Force is under ARU administration, club land is at war with the governing body, and David Pocock is being well paid to save rhino tusks in Africa.
Meanwhile the Brumbies are still mired in the fog of two years of fear and loathing, court cases and suppression orders over a KPMG report that’s still causing high angst in the capital. (And if its contents are ever aired and illegality alleged, watch this space, for some heavy hitters will have a day in court.)
The season will again be interrupted by the June international Test ‘window’ most notably a tour of New Zealand by British and Irish Lions. And that should be very good. The Wallabies, meanwhile, will host Fiji (in Melbourne), Scotland (at Sydney’s Allianz Stadium) and Italy (at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane) on the first three Saturdays in June.
While these inbound tourists would appear a drawcard on par with Uruguay, Zimbabwe and Spain, the ARU has done one smart thing: each Test match kick-off is 3pm. The tradition of rugby long lunches returns. Then, after the Tests it’s All Blacks vs Lions on the box.
And then we’re into the Bledisloe Cup and tyro locks Adam Coleman and Rory Arnold can enhance their growing reputation with bullish performances against whichever husky light-towers the All Blacks trot out, the country has a production line of these uber-people. And with Pocock in rhino country the ABs are again better than odds-on to retain the trophy for the 74,000th time.
Rugby league! First round of the ever-entertaining and kooky National Rugby League pits premiers Cronulla Sharks against Brisbane Broncos at Suncorp on a Thursday night (Mar 2).
And that should pack them in, and no argument. Twenty-four hours later Robbie Farah’s Rabbitohs take on Jason Taylor’s Wests Tigers, and say what you will about the NRL’s crack scheduling squadron, these people have a sense of humour.
Saturday night Cowboys versus Raiders in Townsville should be a ripper, while here we go again, Manly and Parramatta, locking horns at the dear old dilapidated suburban soul town of Brookvale Oval on a no-doubt sweltering Sunday afternoon.
Come May 31 it’s State of Origin 1 in Brisbane, with selection discussion dominating the wires roughly one second after full-time sounds between Manly and Parra. Or even sooner: The Blues showed plenty to win game three of 2016 with Jack Bird and Tyson Frizell emerging as a new breed of Bluesmen.
And they go in knowing that surely, one day, Maroons’ master warriors Cam Smith, Cooper Cronk, Greg Inglis and Johnathan Thurston must slow down. Mustn’t they?
They won’t before the rugby league World Cup (Oct 27-Dec 2) which administrators are wisely taking to Port Moresby, Perth, Christchurch and Darwin, and away from cynical, sophisticated Sydney town which won’t host a finals match, but rather England versus Lebanon (Nov 4) and Australia versus Lebanon (Nov 11). The 14-team tournament will have two groups of four and two groups of three (because rugby league) with Australia expected to dominate England, France, Lebanon, New Zealand, Samoa, Scotland, Tonga, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, USA, Wales, Ireland and Italy.
The AFL season kicks off with a Thursday night blockbuster at Etihad Stadium, Carlton and Richmond (Mar 23). A night later at the Melbourne Cricket Ground it’s premiers Western Bulldogs against the most loved-and-loathed club in Australian sport, Collingwood Magpies, and they’ll just about fill the old girl for that. One player to watch is North Melbourne’s Mason Wood, 23, who showed plenty of potential before a knee injury struck him down in July of last year. Wood has hyper-athleticism and a mighty kick.
The Australian Formula One Grand Prix kicks off the weekend of March 25-26 and will see Australia’s toothsome tearaway Daniel Ricciardo scream around Melbourne’s Albert Park in his Red Bull Renault (pending no late interest from Mercedes).
Ricciardo was third overall in 2016 though managed just one top-of-podium finish. He placed fourth in this race (in 2015) and second (in 2014 though he was DQ’d). Ricciardo says on his website that he’s looking forward to 2017 because slight rule modifications mean extra cornering speed. Ricciardo has spent the off-season doing strength training and says it’s “time to unlock the hidden Honey Badger.”
April 6-9 will see Adam Scott and Jason Day head the Australian charge to a green jacket at Augusta National. Both players time their schedules to peak around the Major Championships, both players know Augusta and its undulations as well as anyone going around.
Scott has one green jacket. Day has been close several times. The international depth is strong – but of all the majors, given the tournament’s predilection to invite back past champions (Larry Mize, for instance) and that it’s on the same course each year, it’s perhaps the ‘easiest’ of the big four to win.
And finally, in the end of April, the six-team A-League finals begin. And we will talk no doubt much more of them.
