Nova’s Fitzy, Wippa & Kate has announced the return of its annual Backyard Cricket match, with the event to be held on the lawns of Kirribilli House on Tuesday, 21 July.
Ryan ‘Fitzy’ Fitzgerald, Michael ‘Wippa’ Wipfli and Kate Ritchie revealed the news on air this afternoon, confirming the cricket fixture will return as the show continues in National Drive.
Fitzgerald and Wipfli will again go head-to-head as team captains, competing for bragging rights with a line-up of sporting stars, entertainment personalities and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
The team members will swap their day jobs for cricket whites and Nova’s “baggy red”, with more celebrity players to be announced in the coming weeks.
Kids to join the match for the first time
First launched in 2018, Backyard Cricket has become an annual fixture for the Nova show.
This year, Australian kids will also have the chance to win a spot in the match and take the field alongside the celebrity players, through a promotion with MILO.
Speaking on air, Wipfli said: “This is very exciting because today we want to announce that we’re going to be holding a very special event that we want you to get involved with.”
Fitzgerald said the team had spent years trying to secure Kirribilli House as the venue.
“We started this process around about 10 years ago, right and we got knocked back on numerous times, saying, ‘Look, no, you can’t. No one’s ever played backyard cricket at Kirribilli House’,” Fitzgerald said.
“We finally got it over the line, and we did not realise, for anyone that doesn’t know about Kirribilli House, but the backyard is the most perfect backyard for cricket.”
Supporting Full Stop Australia and Batyr
This year’s match will raise funds for Full Stop Australia and Batyr Australia.
Full Stop Australia supports victim-survivors from crisis to recovery, while also advocating for reform and safer communities. Batyr Australia works with young people to help create stigma-free communities around mental health and wellbeing.
Ritchie urged families listening to the show to get involved through Nova Player.
“If you’re a kid listening in the car, though, and this sounds like something you want to be involved with… thanks to Milo [go] get Mum and Dad to head to the Nova Player app right now,” she said.
More details, including listener involvement and the full celebrity line-up, will be revealed by Fitzy, Wippa & Kate over the coming weeks.
Fitzy, Wippa & Kate airs from 4pm nationally on the Nova Network. Listeners can stream the show live or catch up with the daily podcast on Nova Player.