SYDNEY, May 26: Cricket Australia is seeking more details about a proposal from England that the timing of future Ashes tours be changed to avoid a clash with the World Cup, reports said on Saturday.

David Collier, the chief executive of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), said this week he was discussing proposals with his Cricket Australia (CA) counterpart, James Sutherland, and they would soon be putting forward proposals to their respective boards.

Collier said England were ‘locked in’ to their current programme until 2011 because of agreements already in place with other boards.

England are due to host an Ashes series in 2013.

Breaking the cycle so the following Ashes in Australia are not held in the same season as the 2015 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand could see them played in 2012.

But Collier said clashing with the London Olympics in 2012 would be ‘suicide’ and that the series in England would be shifted forward instead, to 2014.A CA spokesman said Sutherland will be seeking more details from Collier during the International Cricket Council's meeting in London next month before considering the matter further.

“We talk to the ECB a lot about a range of issues. It is important that we protect the iconic status of the Ashes in the future tours programme,” the CA spokesman told Saturday's The Australian newspaper.

The ICC's future tours programme demands that each Test nation plays each other home and away in a six-year cycle.

However, the Ashes continues to operate on its traditional four-year, home-and-away cycle, the same cycle as the World Cup.

“The ICC now holds a major event every year and we have to be sure we fully understand how that will impact on our events,” the CA spokesman said.

“In addressing the needs of the modern world it is important that we keep the traditions that cricket is based on by protecting the old.”—AFP