Second XI (Australian cricket competition)

The Second XI (currently known as the Toyota Second XI under naming rights) is a men's cricket league competed for primarily by Australian state and territory first-class cricket reserve teams. The competition is administered by Cricket Australia and is considered part of the national development pathway.

Ordinarily a low-fanfare competition that exists purely as a bridge between the Sheffield Shield and grade cricket, the tournament reached its peak of public consciousness ahead of the 2009–10 season, when it rebranded to the Futures League. This coincided with a focus on youth, driven by a restriction on teams to field only three players over 23 years of age. This proved unpopular, and age restrictions were relaxed for the 2011–12 season before being removed entirely ahead of the 2013–14 season.

After 21 seasons of consecutive competition, the 2020–21 Second XI was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic preventing play. Upon its resumption in the 2021–22 season, the Second XI abstained from publishing official points tables, meaning that champions are no longer awarded. League champions were previously calculated based on a points quotient that accounted for the varying numbers of matches that each team may play in a season. The most recent championship was awarded in 2019–20 to the Queensland Academy of Sport.

History
The Second XI competition was established in the 1999–2000 season on an experimental basis as the ACB Cup, named after the then Australian Cricket Board (ACB). Competing teams were divided into two groups and played a series of three-day and one-day matches against each other. The competition schedule grew in 2000–01 as each team would play a minimum of four matches per season, with a winner awarded based on a ratio of matches played to matches won. The competition was renamed the Cricket Australia Cup ahead of the 2003–04 season in line with the ACB's rebrand to Cricket Australia.

In 2009, ahead of the 2009–10 season, Cricket Australia revamped the competition to become a youth-focused under-23 tournament. Now known as the Futures League, it limited teams to just three overage players in their squad, and restricted matches to three days. While the format still allowed for two innings per side, each team's first innings overs were limited to 96 and total overs to 144. A week-long Futures League Twenty20 tournament was also added to the schedule.

Beginning in the 2011–12 season, the Futures League returned to four-day matches with no over restrictions and increased the amount of overage players per team to six. However, the age restrictions remained controversial, with West Australian all-rounder Theo Doropoulous describing the league as a "glorified juniors competition" in a July 2013 Tumblr post. This prompted Cricket Australia to remove age restrictions entirely in November 2013.

Ahead of the 2019–20 season, the competition rebranded to the Second XI to better reflect the purpose of the league.

Competition format
The Second XI competition began in the 1999–2000 season as an experimental tournament conducted by the Australian Cricket Board. Teams played a combination of three-day and one-day matches. As the teams were divided into two groups, no overall champion was awarded. As the tournament expanded the following season, teams now played four-day matches exclusively, although the numbers of matches per season per team did vary.

Four-day cricket continued up until the competition overhaul ahead of the 2009–10 season, which introduced age restrictions and capped overs to the tournament. Matches were reduced to three days for the following two seasons. During this time, a Twenty20 (T20) tournament ran concurrently, and a winner was crowned separately to the full-length competition. Four-day cricket returned from 2011–12 onwards, and the T20 tournament would continue in its own right until the end of the 2014–15 season.

After a three-year hiatus, a T20 component returned to the then-Futures League for the 2018–19 season. Rather than contributing to the overall win-loss ledger, pairs of teams had either eight, six, four or two points added to their full-length season points total depending on their performance in the T20 carnival. This continued in the 2019–20 season, leading to a situation where although Western Australia won the most total matches for the year, they finished second in the overall standings due to T20 results carrying less weight.

Following a year's break in competition due to the COVID-19 pandemic preventing play, the Second XI resumed in the 2021–22 season without official points tables, meaning that champions are no longer awarded.