Big Bash Bashing

Filed in Other by on March 9, 2011

The naysayers and doomsdayers are out and about already. The 2010-11 domestic cricket season is yet to draw to a close and already there is a public backlash to the re-formatted Twenty20 Big Bash, forthwith to be known as the Big Bash League (BBL).

And in my best Professor Julius Sumner Miller accent, I’ve got just one question to ask… ‘Why is it so?’

Having lurked on forums and read the assorted bits and pieces that have flashed past me on my travels through the interweb, it seems the main moan is with the change from a State vs. State format to a City-based approach. (See Tassie Tigers’ paceman Brett Geeves’ blog for just one taste of the negativity)

For those not yet in the know, next summer’s short-form domestic cricket will be contested by eight franchises – one in each of Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane and Hobart and two each in Sydney and Melbourne.

Simple, you’d think, to conjure up a couple of names for the new boys in Sydney and Melbourne and to carry on without missing a beat in the other cities.

Less simple in reality, though, as the CA mission seems to be to differentiate Twenty20 cricket from the more traditional four-day and limited over competitions.

Rather than forging new markets, CA is looking to attract a bigger slice of a specific audience – women and kids – and seems convinced the best way to achieve this is to put something fresh on the plate of these would-be cricket fans across the country.

We’re a long way from knowing whether the grand plan will work, but why (pardon the pun) should we bash it already?

Only a couple of years back, and even today in more conservative circles, every man and his dog was ready to write Twenty20 off as nothing more than a flash in the pan.

I’ll put my hand up and admit I once stood among this crowd. But not anymore – my head has been unashamedly turned during the last couple of summers.

I’ve been won over by the fours and sixes and bright uniforms and blaring music and cheerleaders and, to some extent, the brevity of fixtures.

You can’t argue with Twenty20 being a neat little format. It’s easy to watch on tele, great fodder for local radio and is scheduled in a way that means you don’t have to duck out of work for the afternoon to see both innings live.

Hell, this is the cricket that bought Rana Naved and his ‘People’s Mullet’ into my sporting life. Inshalla, he will return to the BBL.

Also, Tasmania has performed relatively well (they should have been finalists this year, suffering a monstrous clusterf*ck in the prelim) and there’s nothing us folks on the Apple Isle love more than getting one over on you ‘mainlanders’.

It’s this regional parochialism that some people are flagging as the major problem with the BBL (refer back to the Geeves blog and the comments it attracted from the public).

I’m one of approximately 500,000 Tasmanians, I live in Hobart (along with almost half the state’s population) and I can get to Bellerive Oval from any part of town, on any given day, within 30 minutes.

But is the new city-based franchise model of the BBL going to alienate my fellow Tasmanians who live ‘up north’ and further afield?

Will Don from Deloraine ever jump in the Hilux and motor 2.5hrs south to watch a Hobart team play a match that won’t last as long as his return journey would take to complete? He’d have to be a pretty committed cricket fan to do so.

Same deal for folks in Geelong who, by all reports, were within a hair’s breadth of getting their ‘own’ team to support in the BBL. They lost out, however, to a bigger audience and better stadia in Melbourne.

In that case, Cricket Australia have a cross-town rivalry to promote and can never be accused of ignoring the big market. On the surface, at least, it makes good business sense.

But can the same be said for the Hobart franchise?

National Sports Organisations have but a tenuous hold on the Tasmanian market – I’m old enough to remember the collapse of the Hobart Devils and the loss of NBL hoops from the island state – and the Tassie Tigers are one of the few genuinely successful outfits we’ve ever had!

So, isn’t there a risk having Hobart in the BBL will dilute the Tigers’ brand, one that has only achieved genuine legitimacy in the past five seasons with a hat-trick of domestic titles?

What’s to say Hobart doesn't take the inaugural BBL title sometime early in 2012? What then for the Tigers?

A bonanza, that’s what!

The bard, William Shakespeare, summed it up with typical eloquence through the voice of the child bride in the tragic tale of Romeo & Juliet:

What's in a name? That which we call a rose
by any other name would smell as sweet.

Perhaps Brett Geeves didn’t take Shakespeare at high school in the 'City of Glenorchy'. Perhaps he and his northern suburbs counterparts are sick of suffering the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ sent his way by the citizens of Sandy Bay or Dynnyrne or Mount Stuart, who are presumabily thrilled to be specifically represented by the Hobart presence in the BBL…

Fact is, if you’re a fan of cricket in Tasmania, you’ll get behind the BBL franchise and effectively cheer on the local blokes in three forms of the game.

If you’re a cricket fan that refuses to acknowledge Twenty20 cricket as a legitimate sporting endeavour, you are not only living in 2005, you are robbing yourself of guilt-free entertainment and a couple of quality nights out come next summer.

Hopefully I'll see you on the hill at Bellerive. We'll drink Cascade beer, watch the sun set over Mt Wellington and cheer on the Hobart… Convicts? Mariners? Hardwoods?

Who knows? That's a whole 'nother column in itself!

 

Thanks to Mark Nolan/Getty Images AsiaPac for the accompanying photo of Tasmania's Travis Birt in Big Bash garb.

Image:

Comments are closed.