The Ashes: Optus Stadium boss Mike McKenna said Australia and England should have played One-Day fixture

Optus Stadium boss Mike McKenna has hit out at Cricket Australia and England for not taking a radical option to give fans their money’s worth following the two-day Test in Perth. The first Test will go down as one of the shortest completed matches in history, leaving Cricket Australia $4 million out of pocket due to ticket refunds and lost hospitality revenue. All but 500 general admission tickets had been sold for the third day, with the stadium donating a record amount of surplus food to OzHarvest. McKenna said both teams should have come together to throw together a last-minute one-day international match, given the extra three days made available by the quick finish. The move is not without precedent, with 1971 seeing the birth of one-day cricket when England and Australia played a one-day international after the first three days of the Melbourne Test were washed out. “The question is – people pay for tickets – why wasn’t there an opportunity to fill the space with another form of cricket?”, McKenna said to The Age. “They’re paid performers, [on] a big stage, a group of 22 performers, an audience of 50,000 all with money to spend. Why wouldn’t you take an opportunity? “What’s more important to cricket? Engaging fans or looking after player contracts? “It’s not delivering what the fans want. You have people who travelled for days and hours to get here, [and] pay a lot for accommodation. I think the average tourist spent seven days on accommodation in Perth. It’s great to see the tourism sites, but they’d rather be seeing the cricket.” Given the interest and the horde of Barmy Army fans that descended on Perth, McKenna said it was a huge missed opportunity. “I’d firstly say [it’s] a lost opportunity to grow the game in WA because there would have been a lot of people with kids on day three for Sunday,” he said. “They missed an opportunity, and it may not come again for four years. They don’t tend to engage otherwise in international cricket. Not having that opportunity is a miss, and we’re really disappointed we didn’t get an Ashes Test four years ago. “Both teams played their part in the quick finish. I don’t want to let Australia off the hook. After last year, they’d have had more awareness of what the wicket would be like.” The modern contractual landscape of cricketers and the risk involved would make it nigh on impossible to organise such a match in the modern day. While Cricket Australia felt for fans who missed out on first Test action, a spokesperson said the high drama will have a lasting impact over the summer. “It was disappointing that fans who held day three and four tickets for the NRMA Insurance West Test and who had travelled to Perth for the game did not get to see any action. “The overall interest in the Test was fantastic, including a record crowd for any Test match played at Perth Stadium in just two days and an average audience of 2.3 million viewers watching the final session on Saturday. “The impact Travis Head’s and Mitch Starc’s heroics in Perth have on interest in the rest of the series and on kids playing and watching cricket will be immense.”