Cricket Australia (CA) has on Wednesday reportedly cancelled hosting Bangladesh later this year citing financial reasons.

According to a report by espncricinfo, CA communicated to the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) that the tour was not “commercially viable”.

The International Cricket Council’s (ICC) Future Tours Program (FTP) had Australia down to play two Tests and three ODIs at home against Bangladesh in August and September, the latter’s first bilateral tour Down Under since 2003.

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However, the trip was scrapped because Australian free-to-air broadcasters are understood to be uninterested in televising the series in the middle of the football season.

The report further said that CA felt it no longer made sense to play top-end matches, usually played in North Queensland and the Northern Territory, out of season because they get “swamped” by the major football codes.

Earlier this year, CA CEO James Sutherland had told ESPNcricinfo, “The way in which everything works in cricket is that it’s really at the home team’s discretion to work things out as to how much they want to host and what they want to host. There’s obviously an element of reciprocity between what we do, we do that with England, India South Africa.

“We commit to content in other parts of the world under the previous or current cycle, every six years you are at least committed to playing away, but we don’t have to play at home or we can vary the programme at home according to our needs and I think we just got squeezed a little bit.

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“To be honest it hasn’t been a great success, playing in the past as we have in northern Australia. Even more so now with the rise of the profile of the football codes, particularly NRL and AFL, it just means we get swamped and it doesn’t make sense. Besides the huge cost to play up there and getting broadcasters and what have you to pick it up, just makes it difficult.”