Gladstone's Future Tour Picks

Posted: 11^th December 2022

In this new regular feature, Gladstone Small shares his hot picks from our future tour calendar...

Well thankfully the Melbourne weather relented to allow for the showpiece finale of T20 World Cup to be played at packed, noisy MCG. It was an exciting tournament with an equal mix of spills and thrills to keep us on tenterhooks throughout!

Congrats to England on being deserved winners at the MCG, showing the quality of their cricket to become undisputed double white ball champions with both limited overs trophies in their cabinet.

And given how the Future Tours Programme (FTP) is scheduled for the next 5 years, this exciting group of players that England currently has can keep producing the blockbuster style of cricket that has brought them success.

Figures suggest that cricket’s global audience stands at approximately 1.4billion with Asia sharing the largest majority of those numbers. The challenge for the ICC and Cricket Boards is to find the balance between the more traditional red ball cricket and the increasingly populated franchise white ball versions where commercial revenues are more significant.

Personally, and I know this view will be shared by many of my travelling companions, Test cricket is still the format that captivates and captures my interests, and gets my emotions more jarred. This winter tours to Pakistan and New Zealand have proven popular with the travelling fans, and upcoming tours to India, Australia for the Ashes and South Africa will be keenly anticipated particularly to watch England Test team playing the positive, attacking brand of play that brought back series winning ways after a barren run

Those test cricket tours will be interspersed with white ball tournaments as England will defend its Cricket World Cup (50 Overs) title in India late 2023, and the next T20 WC will be held in the Caribbean & USA in 2024. Twelve months earlier in December 2023, England will get another preview of white ball cricket with ODIs and T20 matches scheduled to be played in the Caribbean.

Nothing inspires more than being successful and with the fortunes of the England Test team now on the rise to reach the dizzy heights that their soaring white ball colleagues have achieved; cricket fans are in for an exciting spectating treat over the next few years.