When a Tasmanian club joins the Australian Football League (AFL), plans are in place to hold indoor Test cricket at a new stadium to be built in Hobart.
The Tasmania Devils are scheduled to join the AFL as its 19th team in 2028, and a condition of the agreement is that a new stadium must be built. It is planned to be a multipurpose, 23,000-seat stadium at Macquarie Point with a transparent cover that will enable both floodlit T20 cricket and daytime cricket.
“Our goal is to reach red-ball cricket,” said Anne Beach, CEO of Macquarie Point Development Corporation, on SEN Tassie. The difficult part is that we can’t be accredited until the project is constructed, so we have to continue working with Cricket Australia and Tasmania on the details and design process. We should also collaborate with them to brief ICC and ensure they have all the information they need.
“We are workshopping with them through detailed design so we are making sure we are factoring in everything they need, [so] they have a clear understanding of how it’s coming together then hopefully that sign-off process is pretty smooth. But we do want to get that red-ball sign-off and that’s critical I think to enable that full content to be in the stadium.”
Earlier this week, the Macquarie Point stadium’s concept designs were made public. The blueprints were developed using ball-tracking data to guarantee that the roof would be high enough for cricket.
Cricket’s major concern was the height of the roof…they mentioned worries with Marvel Stadium [in Melbourne] where the ball might potentially strike the roof.”
“What we’ve done is we’ve worked through looking at Hawk-Eye and the ball-tracking technology, to actually assess the maximum height that anyone’s hit a ball, which is quite interesting.”Then, since nobody has ever struck a ball at fifty yards, [we] actually pushed the roof to fifty metres, which made cricket very pleased.”
According to experts, the roof’s design ensures that shadows will have minimal effect on the playing surface.
Although BBL matches can be played with the roof closed and Marvel Stadium staged indoor ODIs in the early 2000s, Test cricket has never been played at an enclosed venue.
David Boon, the chair of Cricket Tasmania, reaffirmed the state’s intention to use the new stadium for cricket matches, despite the fact that this would probably spark discussion about Bellerive Oval’s future.
“There is a wonderful opportunity for Tasmania to be a leader in innovation for the future of the game,” Boon said. “We want to play cricket in this stadium and look forward to working collaboratively with all parties over the coming months as the design is finalised.”
The final Ashes match was moved from Perth to Bellerive Oval in 2021–22, Tasmania’s first Test hosting experience since 2016. This was brought about by Covid travel restrictions into Western Australia. There is very little chance that another Test will be held during the present Future Tours Programme. Australia’s men will play a Twenty20 International (T20I) match against Pakistan in November, and then the Women’s Ashes third ODI in January.