Canes eye newrules for early BBL edge

Coaches study boosts and surges

HURRICANES coach Adam Griffith is not a fan of the Big Bash’s latest rule changes but he and his team are leaving no stone unturned figuring out how to exploit them.

The power surge( a floating, two-over batting power play), X-factor (player substitutions) and bash boost (a bonus point awarded halfway through the second innings) have all been added in an attempt to spice up the competition.

Reviews have been mixed but the purple brains trust is focused on how they’ll impact the BBL.

“I probably don’ t agree with a lot of it but our job now is to really embrace these rules,” Griffith, pictured, said.

“They might be the difference between winning and losing a couple of games which could be the difference in winning the tournament.

“We’ ve sat down as a coaching group already and spent a fair bit of time looking at them.

“How do they fit our group? What are the loopholes or the little advantages we can take within them?”

Griffith said the Hurricanes would look to use their batting depth — featuring crisp-striking stars D’Arcy Short, Ben McDermott, Matthew Wade and big-hitting imports Dawid Malan, Colin Ingram and Keemo Paul — to take advantage of the floating power play and bonus point.

“We’ve got a really deep batting group now so we have lots of options to play it a little bit different if we want to,” Griffith said.

“We’ve really excited about what this batting group can do.

“We’ve got some practice games where we’ ll play around with them and see what suits us best and how we can use them to advantage.”

The Canes were done a favour with a bounty of home games to start the season in the Tasmanian BBL hub.

But Griffith said after the finals fade-outs of previous seasons, the team needed to spread the good form out.

“We’ve been around long enough with the Hurricanes now — we’ve had three pretty good regular seasons and haven’ t done the job at the end of the season ,” he said.

“We’ re trying to build a program that’s successful in season but also in the postseason .”