Andrew McDonald warning over next Ashes and franchise cricket, Cameron Green future

National coach Andrew MacDonald has “full trust” that Australia’s multi-format cricketers will make the tough decision to skip next year’s Indian Premier League if they feel it would jeopardise their Ashes preparation.

The Australian men’s team is about to embark on a gruelling 2026/27 summer, headlined by 21 Tests across four continents, commencing with a two-match series against Bangladesh in August.

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Following October’s Test tour of South Africa, Australia will host New Zealand for four matches before travelling to India before a blockbuster Border-Gavaskar Trophy campaign. Then, after a 150th anniversary Test against England at the MCG, Pat Cummins’ men head to the United Kingdom for an Ashes series and potentially a World Test Championship final at Lord’s.

The only break during this frantic 12-month window is from April-May next year, when several of Australia’s high-profile players are expected to participate in the IPL.

During a busy 2023 season, which also included Test tours of India and England, Cummins and Mitchell Starc made the “difficult” decision to skip the IPL due to the packed international schedule, forgoing millions to ensure they were adequately prepared for the UK tour.

The sacrifice paid dividends when Australia retained the coveted urn and returned home with the World Test Championship mace; Cummins played all six matches during the winter tour, while Starc was the leading wicket-taker of the Ashes, receiving the Compton-Miller Medal.

Australia’s ageing fast bowlers, including Josh Hazlewood, will be faced with the same dilemma ahead of next year’s IPL, which could conclude just days before the 2027 World Test Championship final. All-rounder Cameron Green, currently on a $4.17 million contract with the Kolkata Knights Riders, could be in a similar boat.

England’s cricketers faced heavy scrutiny last summer for their inadequate preparation ahead of the Ashes campaign, and Australia could also find themselves on the receiving end of similar backlash next year, especially if they start the series poorly.

Meanwhile, Hazlewood was sidelined for the 2023 World Test Championship final due to an injury that flared up during his IPL stint; the veteran seamer also missed the entirety of last summer’s Ashes and the recent T20 World Cup campaign due to similar setbacks.

Asked whether he believed the likes of Starc, Hazlewood and Cummins would be willing to skip the IPL to aid their Ashes preparation, McDonald declared he had “full trust” in his experienced players to make the right decision.

“We’ve been through it before,” McDonald recalled.

“It’s something that we’ve done before, so we understand what we’re about to go through.

“There’ll be some different management strategies. We’ve seen over time how fast bowlers, if we want to talk about them specifically, have made some really good decisions and choices around IPL across the journey because of their appetite and want to play for Australia and perform for Australia.”

McDonald pointed out that Starc chose to miss the first few matches of this year’s IPL to recover from elbow and shoulder injuries he sustained during the home summer.

“They’ve made the decision before. They know what’s ahead,” he continued.

“You look at the decisions around Starcy, he had a late entry into the IPL. He was looking after his body, making sure it was 100 per cent right. He had a few small issues and made the decision to get himself right.

“So I trust them to do that, and that’s based upon all the calls they’ve made historically.”

The growing number of franchise leagues across the calendar has created headaches for many Test-playing nations, with Cricket Australia starting to feel the squeeze as players are forced to sacrifice significant earnings for national duties.

Several first-choice players are expected to miss this week’s ODI tour of Pakistan due to the IPL finals, including Cooper Connolly, Travis Head, Xavier Bartlett and Ben Dwarshuis, while Starc, Cummins and Hazlewood are missing the series to manage their workloads.

Last year, it was reported that an IPL team group offered Cummins and Head around $10 million to forgo international duties and take up franchise cricket full-time, which the Australian duo rejected.

Meanwhile, England speedster Jofra Archer is set to miss the upcoming Test series opener against New Zealand due to IPL commitments, which would have been unfathomable a generation ago.

McDonald confessed it would be reckless to ignore the looming threat of T20 cricket.

“The franchise risk is real, players have options,” he said.

“There’s some interesting conversations for administrators worldwide, the ICC and all the boards, but from an Australian point of view, I think Test cricket is healthy. Our players want to play Test cricket.

“You’d probably say the same for India as well, which is really important for the game, that they have an appetite to play Test cricket. But the franchise landscape, it’s real, and for people to say that it’s not real, they need to open their eyes a little bit more.”

However, McDonald clarified that he believed Test cricket in Australia was in a “healthy” state despite the current landscape.

“It feels like Test cricket’s back in the players’ minds,” he added.

“We will be tested in the next couple of summers, potentially, in terms of the appetite for Test cricket, but recency bias suggests that Test cricket’s alive and well.”

Earlier this month, reports emerged of unrest among Australia’s leading cricketers regarding the national contracts, with five senior players pushing back against deals offered to them. After multiple states rejected CA’s plan for Big Bash League privatisation, there is also a growing risk that Australia’s best cricketers will boycott the BBL to pursue bigger paycheques from South Africa’s SA20 and the United Arab Emirates’ ILT20.

CA chief executive Todd Greenberg and chief selector George Bailey both downplayed the situation while speaking to media earlier this month, while McDonald confessed the current contract system might need alteration.

“I heard Todd the other day discussing how we’ve got an outdated model at the moment,” McDonald said.

“The game has changed a lot in recent times and will change at that speed in the next couple of coming years. It potentially needs some alterations to deal with the current landscape of international and franchise cricket.

“Did we think we’d get here this quick? Potentially not, but other countries have had to go through this as well, so this isn’t something that’s unique to Australian cricket. This has been an issue for the game over a period of time.

“We’ve been challenged by franchises around that, and good on them as well. That’s their right. That’s our challenge, it’s a good challenge.

“I think our environment is good. People want to play here at the moment, but I think we are getting stretched in all honesty at the moment.”

McDonald also confirmed that Australia had already started planning for next year’s Ashes, clarifying that preparation was dependent on the team’s World Test Championship final qualification.

The Victorian explained that practice matches can be beneficial for players who have never travelled to foreign countries before, but asserted they weren’t essential for team success. For example, he acknowledged that Australia has a practice match scheduled during the tour of South Africa, where the nation hasn’t played a Test match in eight years.

“Everyone critiques preparation, and rightfully so, because that is the art of getting a team ready for any five-Test series,” McDonald said.

“We have a really experienced group and sometimes we’ve backed off on preparation.

“We believe in practice games at the right time. You may see a little bit more of that happening from time to time.”

‘That’s no excuse’: Coach’s blunt verdict on under-pressure Aussie after horror summer

McDonald also leapt to the defence of under-pressure all-rounder Cameron Green following a lean run with the bat, albeit admitting he “hasn’t performed at a level” expected of him.

The West Australian has faced heavy scrutiny for his recent form in the national side, averaging 24.42 during last summer’s Ashes series and 8.00 during the disastrous T20 World Cup campaign in the subcontinent. The injury-prone 26-year-old has not scored a Test century since February 2024, while he’s never reached triple figures on home soil across 20 matches.

However, Green has shown promising signs across the last couple of months, ending the Sheffield Shield season with a century in Sydney and making some valuable cameos for the Kolkata Knight Riders in the Indian Premier League.

McDonald acknowledged that while Green “hasn’t got the runs that he would like”, he contributes to the team’s success in several ways, arguing that he shouldn’t be judged solely on his batting. The Victorian also pointed out it’s “incredibly difficult” for all-rounders to maintain consistency across all three formats, claiming “very few have actually done it”.

“He’s got high standards with the way he critiques his performance, and I think the external have also got those high standards,” McDonald said.

“The thing lacking in how we are judging him is the sum of all parts, and what he does to the team in structuring it up, his fielding positions.

“He hasn’t got the runs that he would like, we’re not hiding behind the fact that he hasn’t performed at a level that we think he can. He’s working incredibly hard on that.”

Green has been trialled in multiple positions since returning to the national set-up in June last year, batting at No. 3 during the World Test Championship final and the West Indies tour before returning to the middle order for the Ashes. Gradually sliding down the order as the series progressed, he batted at No. 8 during his most recent Test appearance, January’s New Year’s Ashes contest at the SCG.

“We’re going to find a position for him, he’s been up and down,” McDonald added.

“That’s no excuse, but that is something that we’re working on.”

McDonald also recognised that courtesy of Australia’s seam-friendly decks and a redesigned Kookaburra ball, batting averages have dropped dramatically over the last decade, slipping from 42.04 during the 2015/16 season to 26.33 across the last couple of summers.

“The seam movement has been challenging,” he explained.

“The numbers are down from what they usually are, and even Steve Smith, arguably our greatest batter, has been challenged in home conditions.

“Unfortunately, Cam’s two (Test) centuries have come overseas as well and I think that’s what the Australian public has front of mind, what they do in the Australian summer.

“He has had some decent form lines overseas, in particular the West Indies where his percentage of runs within that series was quite high.”

Green has been named in the ODI squad for the upcoming white-ball tour of Pakistan, which commences on Saturday, but Australia’s next Test assignment is a two-match series against Bangladesh in August.

McDonald confessed that more consideration should be given to Green’s preparation as he switches between formats, recalling how in early 2024 he was withdrawn from a T20 series against the Black Caps so he could play Sheffield Shield cricket ahead of a Test tour of New Zealand. The decision paid dividends when Green smashes a career-best 174 not out at the Basin Reserve, a match-winning performance that helped Australia seal a 2-0 series whitewash.

“If you remember back, we had a white-ball series (in New Zealand) and we put him through the Shield game down in Tassie and got him ready through Shield, and we got a good response there. He got 170-odd, it was a brilliant innings,” McDonald recalled.

“So maybe there is a consideration around how we’re preparing him going into a Test series.

“We’ve got a good chunk of time leading into the Top End series (against Bangladesh) as well, it’s very rare that we have that period of time. We’ll probably get some time and space to really invest in some parts of each individual’s games.”

Asked about the prospect of needing to choose between Green and fellow all-rounder Beau Webster, McDonald emphasised that he had not consulted chief selector George Bailey on the matter, but pointed out that Usman Khawaja’s recent retirement had created a vacancy in the middle order.

“There’s a world in which they both fit in (the starting XI),” he said.

Australia’s ODI series against Pakistan commences in Rawalpindi on Saturday, with the first ball scheduled for 9pm AEST.