Cricket Australia could become the first board to host closed-roof Test cricket when the new multi-purpose stadium comes up at Macquarie Point in Hobart, Tasmania. The development comes up after a team from Tasmania is poised to join the Australian Football League (AFL). 

Tasmania Devils, the team that are due to be AFL’s 19th team in 2028, must have a new stadium constructed as part of the deal. The stadium will be multi-purpose, but Tasmania is hoping to host Test cricket there. 

“We want to get to red-ball [cricket], that’s our focus,” Macquarie Point Development Corporation CEO Anne Beach was quoted as saying to SEN Tassie. 

“The tricky thing is…we can’t be accredited until it’s built so what we need to do is keep working through the detail and design process with Cricket [Tasmania] and Cricket Australia and work with them to brief ICC to make sure they have all the information available,” she added. 

Height not a concern

For a closed-roof stadium in a cricket game, height is the biggest issue. To mitigate that, Cricket Tasmania and Macquarie Point have worked with Hawkeye technology to decide the height of the stadium’s 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,” Cox Architecture CEO Alistair Richardson said. 

“Then, actually, [we’ve] pushed the roof to 50 meters, which cricket was really happy with, because there’s no instance of anyone hitting a ball at 50 meters,” he added.

The only stadium so far to have hosted closed-door international cricket and T20 league cricket is Marvel Stadium, in Melbourne. It hosted indoor ODIs back in early 2000s and BBL matches have been played at this stadium under closed roof. 

Future of the Bellerive Oval 

The major concern about this new stadium’s construction is the future of the Bellerive Oval, the other international cricket stadium in Hobart. 

“There is a wonderful opportunity for Tasmania to be a leader in innovation for the future of the game,” David Boon, head of Tasmania cricket said about the development. 

“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 finalized,” he added. 

Australia don’t play a lot of Tests at Hobart. In fact they have only played 14 Tests at this venue between 1989 and 2022. Thus, Tasmania has huge hopes for this new stadium to make it a go-to place for Tests in Australia.

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