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Australia head coach Andrew McDonald has indicated that difficult decisions may have to be made over the participation of the team’s leading Test players in next year’s Indian Premier League as the side prepares for an intense international schedule leading into the Ashes.

Australia’s 12-month workload includes 20 Tests and 14 white-ball internationals, beginning with the two-Test series against Bangladesh in Darwin and Mackay. The schedule will eventually take the team through a five-Test tour of India before a five-Test Ashes series in England, according to Cricinfo.

“I know people will start talking about the IPL and filling that time, and what does that look like,” McDonald told Cricinfo. “I’ve said this before, the IPL is part of our management plan for a lot of our players, and to expose our best players in what I believe is the best competition in terms of T20 cricket has its performance benefits as well. You’ve just got to balance that out.”

Australia’s leading Test players Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Cameron Green and Travis Head are currently associated with IPL franchises, while wicketkeeper Josh Inglis is also part of Lucknow Super Giants’ squad.

However, the IPL window in 2027 is expected to fall between Australia’s five-Test tour of India and a possible World Test Championship final, making it the only substantial period available for the team’s senior fast bowlers to rest and undergo conditioning ahead of the Ashes.

McDonald stressed that managing the workload of the experienced pace trio of Cummins, Starc and Hazlewood would be a major consideration.

“I know that people say, country versus franchise and all that, but the important part of this period is that we’re allowing our fast bowlers to reset their body, get everything in order to give themselves the best opportunity across the 20 or 21 games that everyone talks about,” he said.

“What I will say about our players is they make good decisions across the journey, and that’s underpinned by discussions with the medical team and coaches. They want to play for Australia. There’s an Ashes on the back of that. Hopefully, a World Test Championship final and into a World Cup. There’s a lot of important priority cricket for Australia in that period. So we’re going to have to make some decisions,” he added.

Australia’s fast bowlers have previously skipped or limited their IPL participation when international commitments and workload management demanded it. Cummins, Starc and Head did not feature in the tournament in 2023, instead using the period to rest before playing key roles in Australia’s World Test Championship triumph, Ashes campaign and ODI World Cup victory.

McDonald, however, said the current approach would remain flexible rather than ruling out IPL participation in advance.

“The starting point is that you can do it all, and I think if you start from that point, then you can make decisions according to that,” McDonald said.

“Whereas if you’re just defeatist and say, ‘well, that doesn’t fit’, how do we know where Pat Cummins is going to be come the fourth Test against New Zealand? How do we know where Mitchell Starc is going to be at the end of South Africa? We don’t know. So you gather all that information as you go across it. You make decisions from Test match to Test match, and the IPL will be a decision once again at the back end of the India [Test series],” he added.

“Will the quicks bowl much in India, for example? Where will Travis Head be at in terms of his mental load from being on tour for that period of time? The starting point, and this isn’t to keep people happy; the starting point is that the IPL can fit, and if it doesn’t fit, then you know these players, along with the management, have been willing to make those decisions,” said McDonald.

Australia’s demanding programme begins with the Bangladesh Tests before a sequence that includes white-ball matches in Zimbabwe and South Africa, three Tests in South Africa, home white-ball matches against England, four Tests against New Zealand and the five-Test India tour.

A one-off 150th anniversary Test against England in March is then followed by the Ashes in England in June and July. A World Test Championship final could add another Test to the schedule, before Australia potentially return to white-ball cricket ahead of the ODI World Cup in October-November.

McDonald also rejected the notion that IPL participation was necessarily responsible for subsequent dips in form, pointing to Cameron Green’s experience in 2023 as an example of the complexities involved in managing players across formats.

“People always attach form to the decision-making,” McDonald said. “They’ll attach Greeny’s challenges within the Ashes based upon potentially that the IPL didn’t set him up to succeed in those conditions.”

“But then, if you look at it realistically, it’s the first time he’d been to England in a key series. I think next time he goes to England and the Ashes series, he’ll be better prepared by that experience previously,” he said.

“So I don’t always buy into or subscribe to the fact that if players don’t perform coming on the back of the IPL, that the IPL’s to blame for that. It’s the same as saying people coming out of the Big Bash can’t go and play in India, and if they don’t perform in India, it’s because of the Big Bash. I think the way the current landscape is, players are challenged by going in out of formats, and you don’t blame the series before for what happens in the next series,” he concluded.

Published – August 09, 2026 02:24 am IST

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