Gabba Test: Power failure hits global Ashes coverage

A power failure at the Gabba stadium halted global broadcast coverage of the Ashes series between England and Australia early on day four of the first test in Brisbane on Saturday.

"There has been a power issue affecting the broadcast compound at the Gabba, resulting in the world feed going down and all resulting technology not working," a Cricket Australia spokesman said.

"The issue is being worked on with the aim to get everything working as soon as possible."

Coverage resumed after an interruption of about half an hour.

A CA spokesman also confirmed all DRS technology was unavailable, leaving the game to the on-field umpires during the outage, when the stadium's big screens were also down.

"I just want to apologise to all the fans out there," CA's chief executive, Nick Hockley, told ABC Sport.

"I just want to say thank you to everyone working extremely hard to get that back up and running as quickly as possible and again, I can only say sorry to all the fans."

A litany of technical issues have plagued the opening match of cricket's most enduring rivalry.

Broadcasters reported on Thursday that the equipment used by the third umpire to check the front foot for no balls had broken down.

The RTS 'Snicko' technology, which gauges noise from batting nicks to help the third umpire judge catch decisions, has also been unavailable for the test due to COVID-19 "border restrictions", CA said.