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Well well well, here we are at that time of year again, the start of the Big Bash League, and we are definitely all…excited? Expectant? Nervous? Hungry? I’m not sure.
The fact is, I’m looking forward to the Big Bash League, I just don’t really know why.
It’s all good fun, I suppose. I believe last year’s was very popular, from the opening dance routines to the now-traditional tournament-closing memory erasure ceremony but it’s one of those weird little events where I’m not a hundred percent sure where the fun is coming from.
I mean look, it’s cricket. And to someone like me, in a way that’s enough. If there’s guys hurling balls at other guys who hit them with sticks, I’m all for it.
But the thing about Twenty20 cricket, of course, is that it’s a form of cricket specially designed for people who don’t like watching cricket. Which confuses me. I mean, they don’t have a special kind of football for people who don’t like watching football. They do have the Melbourne Football Club, but they’re not doing it on purpose. Anymore.
I’m not a Twenty20 basher at all. In fact I’m a Twenty20 booster. But when I boost, what am I boosting? Do I just say, “I can’t wait for the Big Bash League, because it’s over quickly!”?
That’s really the biggest attraction of the game, isn’t it? But it sounds bad to say it out loud. “I can’t wait for the Big Bash League, because it showcases some of the finest young talent that you won’t remember the names of next week”?
So OK maybe I’m being too scrupulously honest here. The fact is, the Big Bash League is a couple of weeks of mad slogging, fast bowling, and artless, darting offspinners who don’t turn the ball, and that should be enough for any of us.
But still, it’s an odd little competition, stuck in the middle of the season like that. It’s like suspending the NRL for a fortnight so everyone can play an extended Sevens tournament. I hope they do that – NSW might win at Sevens. But I digress.
I think the strangest bit of the Big Bash League is the teams. Do people follow teams? I guess I follow the Sydney…Sixers? Or the Thunder? Is that right? Or maybe I follow the Melbourne Stars because of Warnie?
Really, in a competition like this, it’s about individual stars, isn’t it?
Even for a generation raised on the revolving doors of the modern football codes, the world of provincial Twenty20, with its FIFO one-game wonders, interstate merry-go-round, and public auctions, makes it difficult for anyone to claim with a straight face that any team is representing anyone in particular.
Coming from Sydney, I can support the Sixers, if I concentrate really hard and squint a bit, focusing on the fact that they’re called ‘Sydney’ to the exclusion of any other facts about them.
But really, we’re supporting players. We want to see sixes and plenty of them. Failing sixes, we want to see shattered stumps, and failing that, we want to see someone hit in the head. Or at the very least a streaker, to distract us from David Hussey’s bowling.
Of course, the Big Bash is fairly young, so maybe strong team loyalties will develop, who knows. Every fanbase has to start somewhere. But the very way this version of the game was set up seems to suggest that’s not really what it’s about.
The ferocity of the contest that we saw in the recent Test series is not really on the radar for the Big Bash: the greater priority is measuring how far the sixes travel.
Will it kill Test cricket? I don’t think so. It might kill 50-over cricket, which these days has a tendency to look like a Twenty20 game that doesn’t have the good manners to know when to leave, but the drama and romance of the Test, I would like to think, will endure. Hopefully not too compromised by the Twenty20 behemoth.
All of this sounds dreadfully cynical, and I don’t want to be one of those guys who goes around bemoaning the horrible commercialism of sport and sneering at innovation and angrily shouting that Richie Benaud would never have allowed players to carry on like they do these days. I’m not.
I like Twenty20. I like the Big Bash. I’m looking forward to it. I can’t wait to see the Melbourne derby. And the Sydney derby. And the…Perth-Adelaide Derby? And apparently the Hobart Hurricanes have a good chance of winning, which is excellent: they breed ’em good down there in Tassie and also wherever else their players are from.
I really, really, do like the game.
I just wish I knew why.