BBL opening week: Break out the dreadlocks

If you found watching the West Indies getting pumped a tad depressing – and who didn’t? – then tonight and onwards for the next six weeks is the time to put some cricketing colour in your life.

Whether your colour is purple, red, green, a different green, just-bloody-call-it-pink, whatever colour Brisbane wear, orange, or blue, the Big Bash League has you covered.

Here’s what to look forward to over the first round of the tournament.

We don’t like cricket. No, we love it!
And specifically, they love getting paid for it.

While their Test colleagues are in for a rough time of their series against Australia, West Indies internationals Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bravo, Darren Sammy, Lendl Simmons, Andre Russell and Samuel Badree will be getting around Australia in the BBL.

“I’m just coming off a back injury so there’s no way I could have actually been a part of that Test team, just coming back off injury,” Chris Gayle said in Melbourne yesterday. Earning upwards of a reported $US8 million in 2015 would make my back hurt, too, I’m sure.

They’re not all making that kind of coin, obviously, but even a quarter of Gayle’s income pales into insignificance what they might earn in a year committing themselves to West Indies cricket. There might be an argument as to how many of these players should actually be playing Tests, but their absence speaks volumes for the state of cricket in the Caribbean.

Regardless, their presence in the Big Bash is a massive boost for the tournament, with all of them capable of turning a game on its head.

Keep an eye on big-hitting all-rounder Russell tonight – he found his range at Homebush in a Sydney Thunder centre-wicket session on Tuesday night, hoisting a Shane Watson delivery well beyond the grandstand roof (check it out in the video above). That’s big!

Rise of the downtrodden
Since the inception of the BBL, having two teams in Sydney and Melbourne has been all about the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. It’s been great for building rivalries and ticket sales, and as most of the major sporting codes in Australia tell us, cross-town derbies are great.

But if there’s one thing I’m looking forward to in this season’s BBL, it’s the rise of the Melbourne Renegades and Sydney Thunder.

The ‘have-nots’ have recruited well in the off-season, and suddenly these teams look strong. So strong, in fact, that both might even have stronger sides than the ‘haves’ on the other side of the tracks.

The Renegades have stumbled across a wonderful recruitment policy: wait until the Melbourne Stars think they’ve found a better player than one of their many genuine stars, and wait for a phone call.

Over the course of the BBL, they’ve netted Peter Siddle, James Pattinson, Matthew Wade, and now Cameron White this way. It’s brilliant, and lives up to their name almost perfectly. This season’s squad might represent the perfect opportunity to finish ahead of their more-fancied rivals.

The Thunder haven’t quite had the same neighbour-plundering success, but they’ve certainly done well in picking up some very useful players whom they’ll have for most, if not the duration, of the tournament. Ben Rohrer, Andre Russell, Shane Watson, Fawad Ahmed, and Clint McKay are all excellent additions, and with some question marks over the Sixers’ bowling attack when they lose their Australian players, there’s good reason for optimism in the west.

Everyone loves an underdog rising, and if both the Renegades and Thunder can overcome their rivals, well, there’s the BBL|05 fairytale written right there.

It’s a big week ahead for… Shane Watson
Remember Shane Watson? Burly, blond-haired all-rounder, played for Australia as much as he didn’t. He announced his Test retirement at the end of the Ashes series in England, but stated his intentions to keep playing for Australia in the white-ball formats.

“I know it’s the right time to move on and still hopefully play the shorter formats of the game, one-dayers and T20s,” Watson said back in early September, when he announced his Test retirement at the same time it was confirmed he’d miss the rest of the ODI series in England with a calf strain.

He was able to return for New South Wales and play five games in their run to the One-Day Cup title this summer, but it’s been grade cricket and fishing – I presume – ever since.

If Watson still has designs on playing ODIs and T20Is for Australia, then he needs to have the BBL of his life. At 34, any Australian selection omission from here on will represent the end of his 10-year international career. And with the next World Cup still three years away, outstanding performance will be the only reason selectors would be interested in him.

That means he needs to fire for the Thunder from tonight. He can’t have a fair-to-middling start to get the selectors’ attention for the limited-overs series against India; he has to be amazing with bat and ball for the next three weeks. Anything less than a brilliant start to the BBL, and he can start writing his international retirement statement in the New Year.

Boundary-rope lotto
One of the more outrageous sights of last summer’s BBL was the at times ridiculously short boundary ropes. One of the opening MCG games last season saw the rope in what must have been a full cricket-pitch length from the fence. Making the situation even worse, most sixes in the match cleared the fence anyway.

Subsequent MCG games saw the rope closer to the fence, but even then, there was little consistency. If it was eight metres in one week, it would be 10 metres the following. It was a similar story at other grounds, too, with boundary lengths varying game-to-game.

T20 cricket is about the big hits, we all get that, but surely we don’t need the rope in so far that chip shots over the infield can be worth six? Bats are good enough and the players are strong enough to clear the fence consistently anyway – witness the aforementioned Russell six for proof. Surely we don’t need to make it easier for them again.

Who’s this week’s premiership favourite™?
Regular listeners of the Cheap Seats podcast will know where I’ve stolen this from, and the unpredictable nature of T20 makes the BBL a perfect place to apply the same kind of WTWPF prediction science.

I’ve got to start somewhere, so this week it’s the Hobart Hurricanes.

Hobart are a genuine title smokey, as they just tick so many boxes. A handy bowling attack, some good, in-form bats in Ben Dunk and skipper George Bailey, and a couple of superstar imports in Kumar Sangakkara and Darren Sammy who can turn a game.

Of course, if you are (or were) a regular Cheap Seats listener, you’ll also know they’ll be toast by this time next week.

Tip of the week
Adelaide Strikers to beat Melbourne Stars in Adelaide on Friday night.

Like Hobart, the Strikers are also proper smokies this season. They’ve got a strong batting line-up, one of the best T20 players in the world in Brad Hodge as their skipper, and some decent short-form bowlers to complete the set.

The Stars are something of an unknown after putting a mini-broom through the place in the off-season, and their entire playoff hopes rest with their big-name English bats Luke Wright and Kevin Pietersen. They look limited in the bowling department, and Adelaide at home are generally hard to beat.