Australia will meet Bangladesh in a two-match Test series this August, with fixtures confirmed for Darwin’s Marrara Stadium (13-17 August) and Mackay’s Great Barrier Reef Arena (22-26 August).
It will be Bangladesh’s first Test tour of Australia since 2003 and only the second time the sides have met in this country. Their scheduled series in Dhaka and Chattogram in 2020 was lost to Covid, so this becomes the make-good – and an officially sanctioned part of the current World Test Championship (WTC) cycle. For those keeping tabs, the WTC is the ICC’s rolling league table that decides the two finalists every two years.
The timing is interesting. From August 2024 to July 2025 the Australians are pencilled in for at least 20 Tests – a punishing run that starts here and barrels through South Africa, New Zealand and India before ending with an Ashes defence in England. The boards have long wanted to push red-ball cricket into the so-called “shoulder” months, and the Top End’s dry season gives ground staff a fighting chance.
Darwin is no stranger to Tests – Steve Waugh’s side beat Bangladesh there in 2003, then overcame Sri Lanka a year later – but it has waited more than two decades for another crack. Mackay, by contrast, has never staged a Test of any sort, so North Queensland gets its own slice of history. Both venues hosted limited-overs games against South Africa last winter and were judged up to scratch.
“It is no secret the international calendar is now crowded and we’re fortunate to have world class facilities available in August ensuring we have another window for Test cricket outside summer,” Cricket Australia chief executive Todd Greenberg said.
Queensland’s traditional Test home, the Gabba, sits out the main part of next season. Planning around major refurbishments ahead of the 2032 Olympics has muddied the waters, although the ground is expected back on the roster before any bulldozers roll in.
After Bangladesh, Pat Cummins’ men head to South Africa for three Tests plus white-ball matches (with a short hop to Zimbabwe for ODIs), return home for England’s limited-overs visit, then host New Zealand in four mid-summer Tests. A five-match campaign in India follows in January–February, capped by the 150th-anniversary Test against England at the MCG in March. The next away Ashes looms in June–July 2027, and if Australia reach the WTC final that could precede it by a fortnight or so.
Before all that, the Aussies also travel to Bangladesh this June for ODI and T20I series – a useful reconnaissance mission for both sides ahead of the August Tests.
