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OPINION
Cricket Australia taking a gamble with Big Bash
The BBL might be taking a gamble with the introduction of some innovations for the upcoming season.(AAP: Craig Golding)
The significant aspect of the strong response to the gimmicky additions to this season’s Big Bash League (BBL) rules is just that — people care sufficiently about the format and the competition to have a response.
The introduction of the Power Surge, X-Factor Player and Bash Boost to the BBL has prompted the sort of debate that grips the AFL each season when yet more incremental changes to interchange or encroachments on the mark are trialled; or in golf between those hoping Bryson DeChambeau is the first man to land a golf ball on the moon and those who want the integrity of traditional courses protected from wedge-wielding behemoths.
But regardless of whether you are intrigued or horrified by the BBL innovations, an argument about compromising the sacred traditions of Twenty20 cricket would have once seemed about as likely as naming the trophy the Chris Tavare Cup.
Just 13 years ago the inclusion of NRL star Andrew Johns as a celebrity participant in the NSW team in the BBL’s state-based predecessor was considered all part of the fun and frivolity of a format only slightly more exalted than backyard cricket.
“The states see Twenty20 as an opportunity to be as left field as possible,” said then-Cricket NSW chief executive Dave Gilbert of Johns’s inclusion.
“Nobody loses sleep if they win or lose.”
Admittedly, Australian cricket was unusually slow to realise that the (even more) limited overs version would quickly become a significant part of the game’s ecosystem.
While England and then India began to position T20 in their domestic and international plans, Australian players were taking the field for light-hearted internationals with their nicknames on the backs of their shirts and performing slapstick impersonations of former greats.
But subsequently, in defiance of the doomsday forecasts of bloody-minded traditionalists such as myself, T20 cricket has not merely survived but thrived — beyond even the obvious commercial benefits provided by the Indian Premier League, BBL and other franchise-based tournaments.
The Women’s T20 World Cup final at a packed MCG last March was a spectacular tribute to the growth of women’s cricket and the wise investment in the Australian team particularly, but also further validation of T20 itself.
Similarly the success of the WBBL in a country where women’s professional sports leagues have struggled
