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The second season of the Big Bash League is in full swing, but the expectation of big crowds to take in the action hit a road-block at ANZ Stadium on Friday night.
Not even the return of Chris Gayle to the Sydney Thunder side or the appearance of Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan for the visiting Melbourne Renegades was enough to entice the Sydney sporting public to attend.
Barely 7,000 patrons turned out to the cavernous ANZ Stadium and were vastly out-numbered by a factor of ten to one by empty seats.
But the Thunder, and their ground announcers, put up an admirable attempt to manufacture some atmosphere.
Before the game, a new mascot was unveiled. Max Thunder, despite being clad in a Norse helmet and brandishing a thunder-bolt, will never be taken seriously as a son of Thor without a DNA test. But he’s sure to be a hit with the kids.
A stage was set up, and dancing girls performed a routine to AC/DC’s ‘Thunderstruck’ as the players walked through a pyrotechnic display to begin the game.
The Renegades had won the toss and sent the Thunder in, with Usman Khawaja and Chris Gayle opening the batting.
The Renegades kept things tight early, and there were plenty of dot balls. But Chris Gayle finally opened the shoulders in the fourth over, lofting to the outfield twice, the second being a massive six into the crowd. The Thunder wouldn’t get another until the 16th over.
In the fifth over, Gayle took off for a suicidal single, but would have made it had he grounded his bat correctly. Instead, while still out of his ground, the bails lit up as the run out was affected and Gayle’s innings was over.
Muralitharan was introduced to the attack. The Sri Lankan Test wicket record holder’s action has been controversial in Australia, meaning his appearances in Australia have been limited, and the crowd hadn’t forgotten, with his every delivery sparking a call of “no ball” from the crowd.
But Muralitharan had the last laugh, as he bogged down Khawaja for four dot balls in a row before trapping him lbw.
Aaron O’Brien went into the attack, and the wickets crumbled. O’Brien took three wickets and Muralitharan two as the Thunder slumped to 7 for 60.
Chris Tremain and Cameron Borgas salvaged something from the innings with an unbroken 56-run partnership with number nine batsman Tremain being top scorer with 37. But a total of 116 didn’t look like it would be enough.
And the atmospheric tricks continued. Music was played between deliveries and at the fall of wickets.
The announcers did vox-pops with members of the crowd and interviewed Bulldogs players Brett Morris and Ben Barba who were at the game. There were merchandise giveaways for the kids who could do the best Gangnam Style and all the while the cheer girls danced on.
But the music and interviews echoed around the empty stadium.
If the Thunder were to have any hope of defending the total, they needed everything to go their way during the run chase. It didn’t.
In the first over, Dirk Nannes had three lbw shouts. The first two were rather optimistic, but the third must have been extremely close, Nannes falling to his knees as he desperately pleaded in vain with the umpire for the wicket.
A catch went down in the second over. The third over saw Nannes land a mid-pitch shirtfront on Renegade opener Aaron Finch, but the Thunder were unable to get the ball back to the wicket while Finch was out of his ground.
Azhar Mahmood struck twice for the Thunder to give them at least some hope; including bowling Marlon Samuels with a donkey drop that looked to have passed Samuels above hip height on the full but dropped to hit the stumps.
But they were rare moments of respite for the Thunder. The Renegades didn’t play many big hits; they didn’t need to. Staying comfortably above the run-rate required, it was a countdown until the runs were scored.
Three more wickets fell late in the game, but that was comfortably within the Renegades’ budget. There was a sense of inevitability about the result long before it was over, with no need to throw the bat around recklessly.
The crowd, small to begin with, was already filing out long before the winning runs were scored.
Although the game didn’t have as much of the explosive action as most Twenty20 games, it was still entertaining.
Tickets are affordable and it’s good family entertainment, so it was somewhat mysterious why the crowd number was so poor. The fans that did attend had a great time.
So why was the crowd number just over 7,000?
Maybe running the Big Bash League concurrently with the Tests is too confusing for the fans. Or maybe the Twenty20 season starts too early.
Last season, the Big Bash League crowds weren’t great at the start of the tournament but picked up after Christmas and into the new year. Maybe they will again this year. But they weren’t this low even at the start of last season.
Maybe the novelty of Twenty20 is wearing off. Maybe splitting Sydney into two teams was the wrong idea.
Or maybe it’s just an inexplicable rogue number, and crowds will be back to normal next game. That’s what the Sydney Thunder will be hoping is the case.
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