it’s girl power in the shop window
The tagline from Cricket Australia administrators when talking about the Women’s Big Bash League is intentionally bold: to grow it into the biggest women’s sporting competition in the world. Not just in cricket. Not just in Australia. Huge. The works. The everything.
With this front of mind, they couldn’t have dreamed up a better start to the tournament’s third season, which was nothing short of carnage with the bat. Ramming home this point, last season only one innings topped 170. In eight games last weekend, that tally was surpassed seven times.
When the Sydney Thunder smacked a WBBL-high 200-6 in the first match, it was truly a landmark. In the next rubber of the doubleheader when the Sydney Sixers amassed 242-4, it was scarcely believable. No Big Bash side had ever made that many, men or women.
It isn’t often you can say someone threw away a double ton in 20-over cricket. But Ashleigh Gardner may have. In all the mayhem, she was dismissed in the 14th over having already made 114 in 52 balls. No woman has ever launched more sixes than the ten she did.
Speaking of tons, there had only been two in two seasons. After New Zealand skipper Suzie Bates saluted in 65 balls on Sunday, that doubled inside 24 hours. The numbers kept coming. 629,000 people tuned in to watch Gardner on (free to air) television. Nearly 8,800 came through the gates over two days at Sydney. It was special.
All told, not a bad weekend for Kim McConnie to have overseen as her first in charge of the Big Bash juggernaut, taking over the job just two months ago. After 14 years living in New York, working in sports marketing, she returned to Australia for the role.
“Phenomenal,” she said of the experience, talking to Geoff Lemon and me on the Switch Hit podcast.
“It wasn’t just the numbers that were impressive,” she continued. “It was seeing so many families and kids having a really good time.”
With her background exploring the relationship between sport and entertainment, this was a weekend where the two intersected perfectly.
McConnie isn’t oblivious to the growing pains a young competition might experience. For instance, the fissure between strong and weak teams.
But encouragingly, where there has been an obvious issue in previous seasons – the frustrating two hours between women and men broadcast games – there has been action. “It is a big ask to get someone to hang around,” she explained. “So in some cases, that gap will now be as low as 5560 minutes.” A nice early achievement.
A more radical structural development for the future of the WBBL, flagged by chief executive of CA, James Sutherland, has been adopting an exclusive October window for it. The logic: that the women’s game can now stand proudly on its own, away from the men.
But McConnie is hinting this might be a while off yet. “Will we get to a standalone comp on WBBL?” she posed. “It is something we are always discussing. But for next season, what you will see is something much closer to what you will see this season.”
For now, energy from the top brass at CA is being channelled into giving the World T20 – which Australia host in March 2020 for women six months before the men – the best chance of widespread success, akin to this year’s ODI World Cup in England.
“We want to make sure we are building as much momentum behind women’s cricket in the lead up to that,” McConnie said. “The WBBL is going to be the shop front between now and then to make sure we are bringing as many fans into the women’s competition as possible.”
With nearly a third of the 1.4 million playing participants in Australia female – and 25% of growth coming from the gender – the market is both swelling and activated. That’s right where cricket needs them. “That is going to have a flow-on effect,” McConnie said. “We are showing the elite and lucky few with the talent that we are nurturing them and have a pathway.”
Shifting gears, the men’s competition has its own launch on Tuesday when the two Sydney teams face off in their now-traditional season opener. It is the first of six games before the Christmas break, 34 coming after.
All up, eight fixtures have been added to the roster through an expansion, which means that teams play ten instead of eight regular season matches.
The product of pre-season horsetrading is that Peter Siddle now wears the Adelaide uniform, changing camps with his old Victorian teammate Brad Hodge who returns to Victoria to wear the Renegade red. Matthew Wade is back with his home state’s Hobart Hurricanes, while Matthew Renshaw will try his hand at the shortest form of the game with the Brisbane Heat.
Naturally, Shane Watson won’t be far away either, preparing for another Sydney Thunder campaign with a century that included 16 sixes for his club side last weekend. With the tournament smashing commercial and attendance records on an annual basis, growth is the word on everyone’s lips: more games and franchises.
It’s easy to see why that is persuasive on paper. But there is an awareness from McConnie too that giving in to every urge could result in too much of a good thing.
“There is a lot of discussions internally about how we get that balance right,” she said. “That fans want more and more BBL but then also fitting that in the broader schedule. So there is definitely a lot of discussion about how we expand and how fast and far.
“We are always open to expressions of interest across the country for a new team but for the short term it is really focusing on the current competition.”
So strap in for the bash that is only getting bigger. McConnie’s task: managing that boom. Something that is often so much easier said than done. But make no mistake, they’re the best kind of problems to have.