(Football news) With the five-match Border-Gavaskar Trophy set to start in Perth on November 22 of this year, Perth Stadium has overtaken the Gabba as Australia’s favorite location for the first Test. From there, the series will travel to Adelaide for the day-night Test, Brisbane, Melbourne for Boxing Day, and Sydney for the New Year’s Test.

Cricket Australia released their summer international calendar, featuring the Border-Gavaskar Trophy as the highlight of the program. Following Perth, the second Test will take place at Adelaide Oval from December 6–10, with day and night pink-ball play. Brisbane will host the third Test from December 14–18. The customary Boxing Day test date of December 26 at the MCG will host the fourth test, and the SCG will host the fifth test beginning on January 3.

Australia has an unblemished record at Perth’s newest venue having won four out of four Tests there including the first one against India in December 2018, although India went on to claim the series. Perth did not host a Test between Australia and India in the 2020-21 series, which India also won when the final Test was held in Brisbane.

Peter Roach, CA’s head of scheduling, said the decision to award Perth the first Test over Brisbane was due to a range of factors with the friendly broadcast timezone for both Australian east coast audiences and India viewers being the final tipping point.

“The clear advice from our national team is that there is a preference to start series strongly at venues where they’re really comfortable and Perth and Brisbane they believe are somewhat comparable in terms of the advantage they get out of that,” Roach said. “They’re the hardest and bounciest pitches in Australia. They also believe that playing day-night Tests in Adelaide is a significant advantage and the stats there are pretty conclusive too.

“So they will look at this schedule and some will say Gabba first would have been better than Perth. Others will say Perth then Gabba. I think that gap has really closed in recent times and the way our players think about that, and having Adelaide as the day-night Test, they’ll be really buoyed about that again. So we’re really comfortable that this gives us a great opportunity to compete with a really strong Indian team.”

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