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Expand the Big Bash to ten teams

Roar Guru
25th April, 2016
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(AAP Image/David Mariuz)
Roar Guru
25th April, 2016
25
1883 Reads

Currently the Big Bash has eight teams. Each team plays each other team once, plus an additional match against their rival team.

This results in 32 round robin matches plus three finals.

Expanding the league to ten teams and would result in 50 regular season matches and in a six team finals series resulting in a 55-game season.

With more matches played the competition window would need to be extended. Double headers every Saturday and Sunday, matches on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day as well starting the competition a week earlier and pushing the One Day Internationals into February would help accommodate the extra games.

Pushing the ODIs into February would also allow players from the Australian team to play during the second half of the competition.

There are several options for locations of expansion teams the two best options would be Canberra and the Gold Coast.

Canberra is a no brainer for expansion, the good crowds for the PM’s XI as well as good crowds for One Day Internationals shows that a team in Canberra is a good idea.

The Gold Coast is a popular tourist destination, in particular over the summer holidays, basing a team on the Gold Coast could help to cater for those on holiday who want to go to the cricket.

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Expanding the competition will put a strain on the player pool, this could be easily fixed by increase the number of overseas players to three as well as allowing players from associate nations not not to be counted as overseas players.

Broadcaster Channel Ten would be thrilled to have an additional 20 matches to broadcast each season.

Cricket Australia has previously stated the the Big Bash won’t be expanded until the end of the current television deal which expires at the end of the 2017-18 season.

This means that the new teams could be ready to start playing at the beginning of the 2018-b19 season.

With the new television deal set the be a lot higher then the current one, more games each season would help to make the next television deal more lucrative than it already is.

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