Cricket Australia has quietly shuffled the third women’s one-day international against India from Melbourne’s Junction Oval to Hobart (1 March) after new lights at the St Kilda venue failed to arrive on time.
The bare facts
• Match: 3rd ODI, Australia v India Women
• Original venue: Junction Oval, Melbourne (day-night)
• New venue: Blundstone Arena, Hobart (still day-night)
• Reason: floodlights not ready; construction works restrict spectator access
• Knock-on: Hobart now hosts back-to-back ODIs, Melbourne misses out altogether this season
With just a single rest day between the second and third ODIs, shifting the game to daylight hours was judged a non-starter. The MCG, the obvious back-up, is tied up with refurbishment. So CA’s schedulers, already squeezed by a late-summer calendar, have turned to Tasmania.
“We are disappointed we have had to move this match from Junction Oval and that there will be no women’s international match in Melbourne this season,” said Peter Roach, CA’s head of cricket operations and scheduling. “We anticipated the Junction Oval lights would be installed several weeks before this fixture and were looking forward to celebrating the first international match under lights at the ground.”
What Melbourne still gets – and doesn’t
Junction Oval will continue to stage WBBL fixtures for the Stars and Renegades, albeit only in daylight. Domestic one-day and first-class games remain pencilled in. The more ambitious plan to unveil the ground’s first international under lights must wait until at least 2026.
Broader picture
CA has already pushed the entire women’s home programme into February-March because:
1) the WPL, India’s franchise tournament, has moved into January;
2) the women’s ODI World Cup occupies October–November.
That shuffle leaves a 12-month gap between Australian home appearances – not ideal for visibility, but it does extend the season into autumn.
“Not having an international fixture in that school holiday period does hurt a little bit, but in saying that, it kind of extends the cricket season, which isn’t completely a bad thing for our sport,” captain Alyssa Healy said earlier this year. “At the back end of the Ashes [last year], I felt like that was really cool to have it at the end of the Border-Gavaskar [Trophy], so hopefully there’s similar sort of momentum this year at the end of the men’s Ashes, that there’s still some more cricket to watch.”
Series still intact
The multi-format tour begins with three T20Is, rolls into the three ODIs, and wraps up with a day-night Test at Perth’s WACA. The switch to Hobart does nothing to the points system – it merely adds a few extra air miles for both squads and, yes, a welcome bonus crowd for Tasmanian cricket fans.
A minor hiccup, then, rather than a crisis – but another reminder of how tight modern schedules are, and how even a few uninstalled floodlight pylons can send planners back to the whiteboard.
