The Test series has been squared in Perth, and now we enter that wonderful time of the year where there’s cricket on the telly every night until basically the end of summer.
The Big Bash League kicks off tonight, meaning it’s time to work on the couch groove and stock up the snacks.
In adding two full rounds and 16 more games, BBL|08 will also run a full fortnight longer than ever before. What started with 31 games in the inaugural season of 2011-12 has ballooned to 59.
There will be more action, no doubt, but that also means more opportunity for some of the international stars of the format to shine on the Australian stage.
Here’s three I’m really looking forward to watching this summer.
Brendon McCullum
A good season with the Brisbane Heat could see the former New Zealand skipper become just the second player, after Chris Gayle, to crack 10,000 T20 career runs. He’s only 380 shy of the mark now, and with at least ten games to come, you couldn’t put it past him.
Like most ball-whackers, McCullum is a get-him-early-or-pay prospect, which has only become more apparent since he retired from the longer forms of the game, three years ago.
Since then, his main metrics haven’t necessarily changed, with his strike rate basically the same and his average slightly down. His conversion rate of innings into scores of 50-plus hasn’t even really changed.
But in the last three years, McCullum has scored just over a third of his career T20 runs, and has hit nearly forty per cent of his career T20 sixes. Of his 135 innings in this time, he’s gone passed 25 on 40 per cent of his efforts, and has 20 of his 51 career fifties.
Obviously, more time on his hands has allowed him to play more cricket, but he’s clearly lost none of his output and remains one of the most destructive batsmen in the game.
And becoming a T20 gun for hire seems to have mellowed him; he’s nearly as abrasive as he once was earlier in his international career and is always good value when mic’d up.
We’ll get our first look at McCullum tonight in Brisbane, when the Heat host the reigning champions, Adelaide. And what money he hits the first ‘maximum’ of BBL|08?
Brendon McCullum back in the day for the Brisbane Heat (AAP Image/David Mariuz)
Dwayne Bravo
Bravo will turn out for his third BBL team this summer, and his second from Melbourne, after making the always-bold move to switch camps from red to green in the Victorian capital.
And, just because I love an obscure stat, the Melbourne Stars will be Bravo’s 22nd T20 side over a career that’s heading into its 13th season.
Bravo enjoys giving himself new monikers – ‘New Big Dog’, anyone? – but famously goes by ‘Champion’, which hovers nicely between ‘chump’ when said with that great Trinidadian accent of his, and ‘champ’, the great Australian cricket-ism that he’ll undoubtedly be hearing from his former teammates during the Melbourne derbies.
But whatever he calls himself or whatever he will be called, he genuinely is a champion player. He’s very much the bowling allrounder these days, and has taken over 100 wickets – more than the next best on the all-time T20 tallies.
He can contribute handy runs down the order though, and that will be crucial for the Stars, after they’ve copped a bit of an injury crisis in the last few weeks. Former NSW and Sydney Sixers bat Nic Maddinson is out with a broken arm, keeper-bat Seb Gotch is out, and with Peter Handscomb out of action with the Test squad until after the Sydney Test, Bravo will need to chip in with some runs.
His death bowling will be crucial, with James Faulkner back home in Hobart, and his new team would love him to take a wicket every 17 balls as he has across his career.
Jos Buttler
I’ll get a close look at Jos Buttler on Friday night in Canberra, when he trots out onto Manuka Oval for the Sydney Thunder against the Stars. Even on one of the biggest playing surfaces in the country, the boundaries won’t be big enough to contain him.
Buttler will play a bit over half the season for the Thunder, before returning to England, and the lime green lot will be hoping he can bring the best of his 2018 form. He hit five consecutive fifties during the IPL, and has seven half-centuries in his last 14 T20 knocks.
In 2018, Buttler is striking at nearly 150 runs per hundred balls, and has smacked 924 runs in just 27 digs.
He won’t be around should the Thunder qualify for the finals, but he can certainly play a part in getting them there.
The rest
As always, there’s some serious international talent on show, headlined by the best short-form bowler on the planet in Rashid Khan.
England captain Joe Root makes his BBL debut, for the Thunder, while South African ball-launcher Colin Ingram has been warming up by hitting tractor tyres with sledgehammers (what do you do, just hit balls?).
And there’s way more than this, but I have to include Bellerive Oval crowd favourite Jofra Archer here. He’s feast or famine, but total entertainment either way.
It seems franchise cricket has forgotten about the great battle between bat and ball. In fact, this season in the IPL there is no battle at all.
The mammoth rise of Jake Fraser-McGurk - his enormous potential and the destructive shot-making that he possesses makes him a very tempting option.
Marcus Stoinis produced his first IPL century and it was a beauty. He went 6, 4, 4, 4 to finish off the Lucknow Super…
Xavier Bartlett has been permission to extend his cricketing education with a spell of T20s in England, playing in the Blast competition for Kent…
Three-Test spinner Matthew Kuhnemann has signed with Tasmania in a bid for red-ball game time ahead of Australia's tour of Sri Lanka next summer.…
Last week, you read about the Matt XI, a compilation of the best cricketers ever to represent the name Matt. And to be fair,…
