South Africa unwilling to give up future Boxing Day Tests

Gerald Majola, the Cricket South Africa chief executive, has said South Africa will not tour Australia over the Christmas period after this year unless Australia agree to visit South Africa for a Boxing Day Test in the future. The MCG will host Australia and South Africa from December 26 this year and Australia's unwillingness to give up the traditional Melbourne match has annoyed Majola.

"We would like to tour there any time, including Boxing Day, provided they are prepared to come to us one Boxing Day as well," Majola told the Herald Sun. "We have no issues coming to Australia on Boxing Day.

"The problem is, Australia do not want to leave Australia on Boxing Day, which in our country is also our peak period. In fact, we would choose to play them Boxing Day and [then] alternate, that's the first choice. They are not prepared to do that."

Cricket Australia's spokesman Peter Young said the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne and the new year's Test in Sydney, which usually starts on January 2, were iconic events. "It's the time of the year when Australians are on holidays and when the public interest in cricket is at its absolute peak," Young said.

South Africa begin their tour with a Test in Perth shortly before Christmas and then head to Melbourne and Sydney. But Majola said CSA was losing out on the arrangement as it meant during the similar holiday period in South Africa there was no international cricket.

"If Australia would come to South Africa on Boxing Day, the ground would be full," Majola said. "It's unfair that we have to travel to them every time to play Boxing Day. That's when our crowds come to the grounds like they do in Australia."

The first day of the MCG's Boxing Day Test is typically one of the best attended sporting days in Australia - 89,155 spectators turned out on December 26 against England in 2006 and the mark hovered around 70,000 for the most recent tours by India and South Africa. In contrast, CSA conceded that it made a mistake by scheduling last year's Boxing Day Test in Port Elizabeth, where only 11,000 fans attended the entire match when South Africa hosted West Indies.

If South Africa refuse to tour Australia over the Christmas period in future it could satisfy Queensland Cricket, which said earlier this week that it was keen to host stronger teams after struggling to draw crowds to the Sri Lanka and New Zealand Tests over the past two years. The Gabba traditionally holds the first Test of the Australian summer and if that involved South Africa, who have not played a Test in Brisbane since 1963, attendances could grow.

"There are benefits with having the first ball of the summer here but that doesn't mean we won't look at other options," Graham Dixon, the chief executive of Queensland Cricket told the Courier-Mail. "It would be great to host a side like South Africa here in the future."