The Australian cricket awards have undergone many facelifts over the past 24 years, largely because cricket’s mix of formats and the desire to put all awards together on the same night have made it a chaotic program to follow for television viewers.

By contrast, the AFL holds numerous distinct awards evenings for different honours: the Brownlow Medal, the W Awards, Australian Football Hall of Fame inductions and All-Australian team announcements.

That sort of array of awards nights is harder for cricket to achieve because the international calendar makes it difficult for all players to be available as often as their domestic football code equivalents.

This was summed up by the fact that CA held a celebratory dinner for the men’s Test Championship and ODI World Cup teams in Melbourne on the night before the awards as it was the first available opportunity to get them all together since the Cup final had taken place in Ahmedabad, nearly three months before.

Hall of fame inductions are typically announced around the time of the Boxing Day Test at the MCG, before the inductees or their families speak at the awards night in late January.

This time, however, Hussey was publicly feted at the MCG on Boxing Day and also did several rounds of media and broadcast interviews during the match between Australia and Pakistan.

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Larsen, meanwhile, was similarly acknowledged during the Gabba Test against the West Indies, including a presentation at the Cricket Australia and Queensland Cricket hospitality function on the first day of the game.

These events, it was argued, provided far greater prominence and audience reach for the hall of fame than mere acknowledgement with a speech at the awards night in front of invited guests and a smaller broadcast audience than typically tunes into a Test match.

Nevertheless, there was considerable angst in the room at Melbourne’s Crown Casino when neither Hussey nor Larsen was included in the order of garlands presented across the awards night – something that past and present players had come to expect.

In Hussey’s case, his continuing presence as both a commentator on Fox Cricket and a sometime member of the men’s team support staff underlines how highly he is regarded as an expert on the game and also a popular figure with all generations.

Given recent differences of opinion between past and present player groups – not least around the exit of Justin Langer as head coach in 2022 – that is no easy thing to achieve.

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