WELCOME FROM THE EDITOR

Cricket is an enduring symbol of the summer, but the game is hardly immune to changing times. The surest sign of this is the shape of this season’s schedule, with the customary one-day internationals after the New Year making way as the Australian side heads to play in India. While unfortunate that we won’t get ODI action on home soil, as Geoff Lemon wrote in the previous edition of the magazine, it could be a boon to the Big Bash season. “The BBL’s summer success has been built on consistency: that a brightly coloured game will break out at the same time, on the same channel, every evening of the Christmas break.”

Recognising these changing times, we present this second edition of ABC Cricket this summer, devoted to the fast-rising domestic T20 league. Grumble as we might about the money hunger and elaborate trappings of the domestic

20-over comps, it has become evident there is a substance to the format. The league is approaching a decade of play, and has begun to develop its sporting character.

Our overview, written by former Inside Cricket editor Robert Drane, notes that the BBL will introduce a finals system this year less prone to chance, and will better showcase the top-flight talent the league can attract. AB de Villiers is the long-desired new name atop this year’s marquee, but Matt Cleary’s piece on the Big Bash’s international signings delves into how it’s not just well-known stars that have made an impact. Indeed, the play of Afghanistan’s Rashid Khan or Nepal’s Sandeep Lamichhane points to one of the most promising avenues opened up by T20, to cricketers from the game’s new frontiers. We’ll see even more evidence of that when the T20 World Cup comes to our shores to bookend 2020.

And on that subject, we have a comprehensive section on the women’s tournament, which will also fill that cricketing gap next February and March. It’s not hyperbole to say this could be the biggest moment yet for women’s cricket in Australia, with a generational team stepping into its brightest spotlight at home. The ABC’s Brittany Carter takes a look at this group, blessed with a historic opportunity to pursue cricket professionally, and talented enough to live up to the expectations. If Meg Lanning, Ellyse Perry and company can fulfil Aussie hopes and make it to the final at the MCG on March 8, and draw a sell-out crowd that could break the recognised mark of 90,185 for a women’s sporting event, the 1999 FIFA

Women’s World Cup final in Los Angeles – and all on International Women’s Day, no less – we have a global story beyond sport.

Even the most ardent cricket traditionalist wouldn’t begrudge T20 that. Just not cricket? Just more cricket, we say.