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The problem with cricket's schedule? Depends on your perspective

Does the Big Bash League need more than just ageing stars to thrive? (image: AAP)
Expert
25th January, 2017
15

In the last week, the calls to get rid of ODIs from the month of January have slowly grown louder, though the most recent comments have emanated from a similar source of frustration.

Trent Woodhill, a Twenty20 list manager and the Melbourne Stars batting coach, has provided some wonderful insights around coaching and the preparations of squad lists over the last month. He’s done this in the IPL, and obviously the BBL, so he knows a fair bit about what works and what doesn’t.

He’s certainly not afraid to criticise Cricket Australia’s approach to coaching, and especially the appointment of coaches. He’s more than happy to refer to the adage that great players don’t necessarily make great coaches, and even watching the Australian Open tennis last week was able to work in a jibe, admiring Novak Djokovic’s natural technique, before adding he was “pretty sure somebody at CA would try and coach it out of him”.

But he also weighed into the traditional scheduling of ODIs recently, commenting on the morning of a Stars game that he wanted to see David Warner in the BBL.

Woodhill is Warner’s personal batting coach, for the record, but that isn’t the major issue here – he also works with Steve Smith, Glenn Maxwell and Peter Handscomb, among others.

Last weekend, following the revelation that the Stars were of the belief all-rounder Marcus Stoinis would be released from the Australian side to play in the game they lost to the Sydney Sixers, Stars CEO Clint Cooper called for urgent discussion around the scheduling.

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“I think what we need to do first – clubs, state associations, Cricket Australia and the players’ association need to get together and maybe have some honest, robust discussions about how can we actually make this work more effectively,” he told Fairfax Media.

“I think having the four parties working together, there is certainly a way in which I reckon the calendar can be structured, maybe even better communication between the Australian team and the clubs, to enable some better planning.”

Cooper went on to say he believes the BBL starting earlier in December and extending into February was inevitable, particularly if CA want more T20 games, or even more teams.

But his motivation is obvious: he wants the Test and ODI players in his BBL squad to be available.

In recent games, the Stars have been without Stoinis, Maxwell, Handscomb, James Faulkner and Adam Zampa. They might’ve been without paceman John Hastings, too, if fit.

Cooper has a fair point; why wouldn’t CA want their best players in the BBL?

And there’s only two ways to achieve that: either moving the ODIs, despite the fact they’ve been played in January since Jesus first took the new white ball for Nazareth, or by spreading the BBL out further.

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As a BBL team boss, Cooper wants his best possible team playing well, in front of as many people as possible. He’d even argue that more of the former will also increase the latter.

But there’s another side to this, and it’s something Woodhill would be all over as a list manager. The Stars knew going into BBL06 that Maxwell, Faulkner, Zampa and Hastings were a strong chance to play one-day cricket in January. Even if they weren’t sure about Stoinis and had high hopes for Handscomb, having four highly probable international players in an 18-man squad doesn’t leave a lot of room for error.

And now-former Stars captain David Hussey hinted at this in the same Fairfax article.

“Well, yeah, in the future, look at the Thunder, their whole direction is to pick players who are not going to represent Australia. It’s a good direction and they stick to it. We try and pick the best possible talent that we have at our disposal at any one time,” he said, agreeing that the Stars might need to revisit their squad assembly.
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Don’t forget, all this was said before the Stars lost a fifth semi-final in six seasons. It would be fair to conclude time hasn’t eased their feelings on this.

On the other side of the coin, a train of thought that I’ve long espoused has gained another follower.

“I do think, though, that Twenty20 cricket should become franchise dominated,” Pakistan coach Mickey Arthur said at the start of the five-game ODI series this month.

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“I’ve never been a massive advocate of international Twenty20 cricket except a World Cup every two or three years, because that gets the best players together and they go against each other. International cricket belongs in the 50-over and Test cricket [formats] for me.”

I’ve held this opinion for a long time. Intrigued, I delved into the archive to find the earliest airing:

“If the corporate/domestic T20 competitions around the globe show no sign of retreat, then maybe it’s the international version that can easily be dispensed with,” I wrote back in March 2009 – so long ago that I was still several months away from graduating from the blue side of The Roar, and two years before the first season of the BBL.

Ian Chappell has been with me for nearly as long, and The Roar’s own Jason Gillespie came on board in November 2014, while also calling for four-day Test matches to the trialled.

Former New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming mentioned the same idea just last November. That’d be Stephen Fleming, the current Melbourne Stars coach, you’ll recall.

Would scrapping T20Is help the Stars?

Maybe. It would definitely free up some calendar room, which might ultimately mean that ODI players can play more – or some – BBL games.

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But regardless, and as if five previous successively disappointing BBL finals series wasn’t proof enough, the Stars clearly have bigger problems regarding their recruitment approach than how tight the calendar is.

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