REnegades fans got a kick out of the Melbourne BBL derby last Sunday as they watched their side triumph in the final against the Crosstown Stars. But it was Australian cricket officials who headed home giddy amid an increasingly heated international match between T20 franchise leagues.
The 68,124 crowd at the MCG – the highest BBL crowd since 2017 – were joined in Perth by almost 38,000 people to watch the Scorchers beat the Strikers later that evening. The combined attendance set a record of 105,767 visitors in one day.
It was a statement for the BBL on the same day its main global competitors held their own major events. In the UAE ILT20 final, the Desert Vipers defeated MI Emirates, but the 25,000-seater Dubai International Cricket Stadium was far from full. In the South African T20 competition, the crowd at Newlands was healthier, but a low MI Cape Town total allowed local rivals Paarl to end the one-sided match seven overs early.
A push for private investment in the BBL is driven by the need to keep pace with these upstart competitions and ensure the now 15-year-old Australian T20 showpiece remains a key part of the increasingly busy calendar. But Alistair Dobson, head of BBL and WBBL at Cricket Australia, insists it’s not all about the money.
“We are quite competitive on salaries, although that will remain important to us,” he said as he looked out over the MCG ahead of Thursday’s clash between the Stars and Sixers.
“But you have to look here at the MCG to see the quality of experience our players get. We talk to them a lot about what’s important to them, and yes, getting paid appropriately is important, but coming and playing in the Australian cricket summer is a huge selling point.”
Sam Curran was in Dubai for that final on Sunday as captain of the victorious Vipers, owned by Avram Glazer of Manchester United fame. The England all-rounder flew to Sydney the next day to join the Sixers, and played his first BBL match against his brother Tom’s Stars (who withdrew late due to hip pain) on Thursday. Curran had not been to Melbourne since being named player of the match in the 2022 T20 World Cup final at the MCG more than three years ago.
“I never really had time in terms of passing [BBL] in the schedules, but as soon as the opportunity arose to come to the Big Bash I’m grateful I was picked up,” says Curran, having experienced a mixed debut with two catches, 17 runs but also a scoop that accounted for 21. “Tonight’s show is obviously my first experience of it. It’s noisy, there are lots of kids around and it’s a great place to play cricket.”
The coming weeks will provide precious oxygen to the BBL in the suffocating cricket calendar. Australia’s Ashes winners will return to their BBL franchises for the end of the regular season and in the lead-up to the final, allowing the league to benefit from the Ashes afterglow. And all but one of the BBL sides are still in contention to play finals.
As talks about opening up the BBL to private investors intensify, there will never be a better opportunity for the league to showcase the value of its product. Television audiences on both Foxtel and Seven are up, and last week – thanks to the Ashes lead-in – BBL matches averaged more than 1 million viewers across free-to-air and subscription platforms on four consecutive nights for the first time in seven years.
“It feels like we’re getting back to that level of public awareness and public interest,” Dobson said. He says the turnaround is driven by a combination of factors, including signing quality players, high scores and the long-term returns of being early in the T20 revolution. “15 years old is still a young league in the context of the footy codes in Australia, but we are now seeing a second generation of fans coming through,” he says.
However, much about the future of the BBL is up in the air. Cricket Australia is trying to convince state bodies and the players’ association to open the eight BBL sides to investment from wealthy global elites, including some who own franchises in the Indian Premier League, the UK’s Hundred and even the BBL’s main rivals in South Africa and the UAE.
Such a move would require a rethink of Australian cricket, including where the BBL sits alongside the Tests in the Australian summer, with lingering questions including who benefits from the influx of private money and how much should be channeled to foreign players. The matches between Cricket Australia and the states will continue in the coming weeks.
The potential is not hard to see. On Thursday, hundreds of Melburnians from Pakistani backgrounds stayed behind after the match at the MCG seeking an audience with Babar Azam, the megastar opener who is playing his first BBL season with the Sixers.
Dobson expects more opportunities to generate interest among South Asian audiences will emerge. Although male Indian players have long been banned from participating in Australia’s T20 competition, Ravi Ashwin – after retiring from international cricket – signed with the Sydney Thunder for this season. Sadly, the spinner with 1.8 million YouTube subscribers pulled out with an injury, but is keen to return next summer.
“Given that the BBL is in an evolution from perhaps a domestic competition to a global competition – although we have always had foreign players, we have had a very domestic focus – the future for us is to find a balance between global and domestic,” says Dobson. “So we have to be creative and ambitious and keep telling our story.”
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