Perth Stadium in Perth, Australia (60,000 capacity), commercially known as Optus Stadium, opened in 2018 and replaced the WACA as the city’s international cricket venue. It quickly established itself as one of the fastest and most hostile pitches in world cricket. The old WACA was the fastest pitch in the game for decades, and the question when the new ground took over was whether it could replicate that tradition. The answer is yes. The pitch is fast, bouncy, and genuinely hostile to batsmen who cannot handle pace above their eyeline. The ball flies through at shoulder height, edges carry to the slips, and the extra bounce makes bowlers who would be medium-fast elsewhere suddenly feel like express.
Perth Stadium holds 60,000 spectators, making it significantly larger than the WACA’s 24,500, and the modern bowl design amplifies crowd noise in a way the old ground’s open stands never could. The stadium sits on Burswood Peninsula along the Swan River, and its design is spectacular: a ring of bronze-colored metal panels that glow orange in the Western Australian sunset. Walking to the ground across the Matagarup Bridge, with the Perth skyline behind you and the stadium growing larger ahead, is one of the great approaches to any cricket venue in the world.
The playing conditions are defined by Perth’s climate and geography. Western Australia’s dry heat produces hard, fast pitches with minimal grass cover. The Fremantle Doctor, a strong sea breeze that arrives most summer afternoons, assists swing bowling and can make batting on the second day particularly challenging when the ball moves both off the pitch and through the air. Mitchell Starc’s 6-69 against New Zealand in the first Test at the new stadium in December 2019 demonstrated that Perth’s reputation for pace bowling had survived the move.
The stadium hosted a day-night Ashes Test in December 2021, where Australia’s pace attack demolished England under lights, the pink ball misbehaving in the evening session as the temperature dropped and the ball hardened. England’s batsmen had no answer, and the Test was over inside four days.
In 2026, Perth Stadium hosts bilateral international Tests and white-ball matches as part of Australia’s home summer. The Perth Scorchers also play BBL matches here, and the ground’s capacity ensures that any Australia home international fills a significant portion of the 60,000 seats.
Perth operates on Australian Western Standard Time (AWST, UTC+8), which does not observe daylight saving. A Test match starting at 10:30 AWST is 02:30 GMT in London (previous night for UK fans), 22:30 the previous evening in New York, and 06:00 IST in India. The timing works well for subcontinental audiences but is brutal for viewers in Europe and the Americas. Check whatisthetime.now/perth for current local time or whatisthetime.now/country/australia for Australian timezone details.