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Big Bash season six: The momentum builds

Roar Guru
12th December, 2016
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The Sydney Thunder celebrate claiming BBL 05. (AAP Image/Mal Fairclough)
Roar Guru
12th December, 2016
21

I can happily sit and watch cricket for five days in a row. But there are many who don’t have the time or the inclination to do so.

Fortunately, I also love T20, the newest format of cricket, which is growing rapidly and creating new opportunities for the game.

In Australia, the Big Bash League is about to enter its sixth season.

It’s a competition that is building momentum, to the point where after two lacklustre international seasons in a row, it’s likely that more people will attend Big Bash matches than Tests in every city except possibly Adelaide.

It’s not hard to see the appeal of the T20 Big Bash League.

Attending the game or watching on TV, you can follow a complete game from start to finish in the evening after work.

Tickets are affordable and it’s a family-friendly package. There’s big hits, colourful uniforms, stumps and bails that light up; and plenty of music, crowd interaction, cheerleaders and a constant flow of entertainment.

Sydney Thunder BBL Final 2016

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The critics shake their heads.

“That’s not real cricket”, they say.

But why isn’t it?

Were there not three stumps with two bails at each end; was there not a cricket ball, or overarm bowling, or willow bats; then indeed it would not be cricket.

But there’s nothing in T20 that deviates from the MCC Laws of Cricket.

There’s not the time to build an innings that there is in the longer forms. There’s not the ability to bowl well wide of the stumps, or to leave a swinging ball.

Although these are valid strategies in the longer forms of the game, there’s nothing set in stone about them.

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Teams hitting sixes in the first over of a game, opening the bowling with a spinner and changing the bowling for the third over doesn’t in itself disqualify a game from being cricket.

Is it that the teams are city-based clubs rather than national or state representative teams?

Clubs are par for the course in other sports. Clubs with their own emblems and colours in the AFL, NRL, A-League – the list goes on.

Domestic leagues are played by clubs. They sign the best players they can, not relying exclusively on local residents.

Why shouldn’t cricket have a national club competition?

The music between deliveries, the flame-throwing machines, the cheer-girls, the vox-pops, the selfie wall on the scoreboard, the bouncy castle and face-pointing, and the other entertainment.

It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but the crowd loves it. And it keeps the kids entertained.

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It reinforces that we’re at a game and that we’re following it for fun. Nothing wrong with that.

T20 has, on occasions, been blamed for the drop-off in Australia’s international performance.

It has been suggested that Australia would have been better prepared for Tests had the Big Bash not been in existence.

Which is interesting, as India are the number one rated Test team. And they too have a domestic T20 league.

The best players still make themselves available to play for Australia. Unlike the West Indies, who we saw tour Australia last year without the likes of Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bravo and Andre Russell.

They’re holding up at the moment, but Pakistan could be ripe for a raid by T20 franchises. They’ll never play at home again, and it’s hard to imagine they’re enjoying playing on roads in the desert heat in front of 20 people.

But, love it or loathe it, there’s no doubt the Big Bash is on the rise. Last summer saw the amazing sight of the biggest cricket crowd of the season being at the Melbourne derby.

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In scenes reminiscent of the switching on of the lights at the SCG in World Series Cricket, a crowd of 80,883 surged through the MCG gates, while TV ratings on Channel Ten raced over the million mark.

For Channel Ten, the Big Bash has been massive. The network was originally given the rights as a consolation prize after missing out on the international rights, but they’ve turned it into a winner.

The Big Bash has helped the rise in the profile of women’s cricket too.

With the shorter games, it’s viable to play a curtain-raiser. Our female cricketers, used to playing in relative obscurity, are now able to get a slice of the action on these blockbuster game days.

The Women’s Big Bash came into being last summer with selected games being televised, originally on Channel One.

Then, on that fateful day last summer, as the 80k crowd was filing into the MCG, Channel Ten showed a WBBL match on their main channel for the first time.

And it was a ratings winner.

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The second season of the WBBL started last weekend. And Channel Ten was there, showing four games live.

Publicity for women’s sport that would have been unimaginable even recently.

If someone had told me just two years ago that a commercial TV network would show women’s domestic cricket in primetime on their main channel, my response would have included a reference to the hallucinogenic drugs I would have assumed they were taking.

But times change quickly.

We’re a week away from the start of the BBL’s sixth season.

There’s plenty of big names, both Australian and from overseas, ready to make their mark.

It’ll be a season with big hits, glamour and entertainment on the cricket field.

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A season where dreams will be made and broken.

A season where the turnstiles will click over quickly as crowds flock to the grounds.

A season I’m looking forward to.

It’ll be cricket, and it’ll be fun.

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