AFTER THE FORK IN THE ROAD

While the world sprints, Australia stalls. What’s next for the BBL?

“2016 was unbelievable,” an ex-player tells Cricket et al. He goes on. “Which BBL was that again? 8? 9?” Who knows.

This is reference, of course, to the BBL’s atypical titling convention, where each season of the competition is suffixed with a numeral, the way a movie sequel or trilogy might. After three, however, it’s suggested you refer to any series as a “saga”, or a “franchise”. However, the latter can’t apply to the BBL, whose teams are clubs, not franchises. Executives will remind you of this. It was BBL 6.

There’s a lot of love out there for the Big Bash League. A competition “born into the world with a clear purpose and clear identity”, as one executive tells Et al, its formative years were developmentally healthy, all milestones achieved. Names, numbers: TV and in-stadia. It was there to complement international cricket and grow a new fan base. Kids watched cricket, left with buckets on their heads, and viewers enjoyed a charming, minimum-two-buttons-down repartee between Punter and June. There was a place for clubbies and a place for champions. Craig Simmons at one end, KP, Gayle, Lee, and Warney at the other. It was powerfully commodified hit and giggle, and it worked. Show me a child until he is seven and I’ll show you the man, Aristotle is meant to have said. Well, BBL | 7 was quite good. A promising child.

BBL | 14, a teenager, is less certain. As global tournaments prise marquee players in marquee timeslots, the competition now looks a little straightjacketed by comparison. A specifically Australian orthodoxy prevails, which figures that cricket is only really watched in December and early January, leaving time for Tests and crumbs for the rest. BBL-as-the-gateway was fit for purpose in a nascent T20 landscape, but as other tournaments now outstrip it for substance and sheen, it begs the question: where to from here?

Sunday’s Overseas Player Draft saw a televised spectrum of legends and lanyards sitting quietly and making decisions with laptops. At the end, each club had added some overseas players to its stable. Names appeared on graphics and lower thirds. Afterwards, BBL Head Alistair Dobson struck a tone of triumph. “The Big Bash remains a destination of choice for the world’s best players,” he concluded. “…as reflected by the calibre of nominations received and the players recruited today.” Dobson has a job to do and the competition’s leader is going to talk the competition up. Fair enough. However, of the several people Cricket Et al spoke to for this piece – current and former players, coaches, sports and media executives, there was unanimity that those selected in the draft – while fine exponents of T20 cricket – were not, in fact, “the world’s best players” in either skill or marketability. This is muttered, of course, like the comments of parents after the child has gone to bed. Are they asleep? Is the door closed? Behaviour needs discussing. It says something about the ongoing uncertainty around the BBL’s identity that there always seems an obligation to talk this thing up. To offer a platitude, even when what we read might not quite match what we see.

Greg Shipperd, Sydney Sixers coach, did speak out. The crux of his critique of the draft was that the system creates an inefficient use of money. Shipperd’s comments, hardly explosive, might be seen as the kind of cut and thrust indicative of a seriousness that some BBL proponents crave. This is fuel for debate, isn’t it? Grist for the mill. He probably could have gone further. There is general sentiment among domestic players that they are now receiving “unders” in order to facilitate exorbitant payments to overseas players, who, in many cases, aren’t exactly the crème de la crème. It sticks in the craw of national players, too, who received the hard-word recently that their participation in the Big Bash was crucial to the national cricketing effort. One player reportedly responded that if the league was going to prioritise payments to overseas players, he too would prioritise superior payments overseas.

Australian professionals familiar with the global trends and machinations of short form cricket are growing restless. While eyes now glaze at news of the latest national contract rejection from countries like New Zealand and South Africa, closer to home similar things are happening with more frequency at state level. As state cricket compromises franchise opportunities, standby for more senior players eschewing contracts and opting for the pick-me-when-you-need-me posture. More and more you hear of young players using red ball to help their white ball, or, as one said, “what young player froths on 400 balls like Steve Smith anymore?” which might partly explain an ageing national team. And that’s if young players are particularly interested in the national team in any event, as multiple senior people privately express a view that youthful public enthusiasm for The Baggy Green is more likely lip-service. An ex-player said, “players today want to play challenging cricket, with good blokes, in teams that are going to win, and they want to get paid.”

It follows that many would like to see private investment in the BBL explored. “Let’s dare to deal in that space,” one said. Some spoke of “49-51” ownership percentages, others suggested private ownership be piloted on two teams: “…let’s see where it takes us.” Others fear that ship may have sailed. Executives refer to CA’s identification of Australia cricket’s “fork in the road” moment, referring the acknowledgement of international cricket’s decline in commercial value, and domestic T20 cricket’s inverse rise. As a result, a 30-ish game season became a 56 game league. The elastic band was stretched, and efforts to fatten the pig for market failed. South Africa and the UAE took January, and the BBL necessarily retreated. Some say that state dialogue with IPL consortiums continues behind the scenes, while others wonder whether the conditions don’t suit. “The Australian dollar, tax, foreign exchange, Saudi Arabia for starters…” says one, voice trailing off, suggesting Australia is uniquely prohibitive for such ventures.

Perhaps a better question is: what happens if Australia doesn’t pursue investment? As short-termist, bottom-line-only administrators and mercantilists reorganise cricket around the T20 format, England has moved accordingly. Private investment, short form in peak-season, all to itself. Its best players are increasingly available, too. Those familiar with The Hundred understand that it works best when England’s best are involved – “…when Harry Brook is facing Jofra,” says one. “Not when Rashid Khan is bowling to Kieron Pollard.” That type of scenario happens more there than here and will only become more common. Next year, reportedly, the entirety of England’s Test team will be theoretically free to play the entirety of The Hundred. The BBL can only dream.

Let’s have it right. Most professionals playing in the Men’s Big Bash League are, as amateurs are wont to say, “worldies”. They are all damn good cricketers. But as the T20 landscape matures, with higher stakes and meaningful implications for Australia’s own cricketing sovereignty, the current model of long form and short form “co-existing” asks for fresh thought and leadership acuity. In this context, it is reasonable to wonder whether the current offering is commensurate with where Australians see themselves in global cricket. To that end, as the BBL shuffles down the road: tinkering with rules, paying overs to overseas unknowns, snookering its best Australian players – and still doing pretty well with that hand – it risks consolidating itself as a living emblem to something middling, something at odds with Australia’s conception of itself.