Only a quarter of the way through the ninth iteration of the Women’s Big Bash League, it already feels like enough has happened on and off the field to fill a new version of Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start The Fire. Sure, it wouldn’t be in line for any Grammys, but it might go a little something like this:
Grace Harris broken bat, do we need the golden hat? / Melbourne Stars 29, draft picks sublime / Athapaththu out to impress, give us more DRS / Alyssa Healy dog bite, why aren’t more games played at night? / We didn’t start the fire.
It has been an impressive start to the season, the first to have an international draft , which has already had an impact. Perhaps the team who looked most to benefit from this system is the Sydney Thunder, who won just one game in the previous season and were left languishing at the bottom of the ladder, only two seasons after winning the competition.
With the draft in play, the Thunder were given the No 1 pick, which they used to recruit South African Marizanne Kapp, one of the world’s most sought after players. Kapp was solid in her first outing for the lime green, but it is another international player, Sri Lanka’s Chamari Athapaththu, who has stamped her authority on the competition, with dominant half centuries in two appearances for her new team. Although they are two-time winners of the WBBL, the Thunder have never been a dominant batting side, but their performances to start this season have suggested that may be changing. Interestingly, Athapaththu was not selected in the original draft, her former team the Melbourne Renegades not activating their retention rights to the Sri Lankan captain.
The Renegades did choose to retain the West Indies captain, Hayley Matthews, fresh off a sensational T20 series against Australia with the bat. But it is with the ball that she has been proving her worth for the Renegades, currently the competition’s top wicket-taker. So far the draft looks to have done its job in balancing the competition despite not delivering a particularly intense amount of movement between teams.
This balancing has played out in interesting ways, most notably in some wild swings in form – from the Melbourne Stars opening the season with a solid win over the Sydney Sixers before coming up against the Adelaide Strikers and being bowled out for 29, to the Strikers following that performance up with an 81-run loss to the Renegades – it is near impossible to predict the winner of any given match. Every team now has at least one win to their name and those wins start to increase in importance as time goes on. With the season as compressed as it is, form slumps can be fatal to a team’s chances, and momentum building behind a few games could carry anyone through to finals.
Scheduling has been another question for many fans. While the competition has gone from strength to strength on the field, not much has changed in recent years around the times games are played. Coming into this season, the big news was games would be played in big stadiums for the first time in the standalone era of the WBBL. Those matches at the Adelaide Oval, MCG and SCG will take place late in the season and, along with the reduction of matches played at neutral venues from 24 down to 10, are an important step for the competition.
However, throughout the opening rounds of this season, the scheduling of games during the day on weekdays has continued to be an issue, with only small crowds turning out at the grounds or tuning in on broadcast. Of the Thunder’s eight games played in Sydney, four are scheduled for during the day on a weekday, while another is being played on a Saturday afternoon, clashing with junior cricket. WBBL memberships are relatively inexpensive, however, it is unlikely clubs could raise these costs when many people are unable to attend the majority of home games.
These awkwardly scheduled games also lack the same level of technology as other games. Those who do tune into the broadcast would surely notice the lower quality camera work, and DRS has not been available, which has led to some umpiring “howlers” unable to be checked. Rhys McKenna was the most notable victim, given out stumped in the Stars’ loss to the Strikers while clearly inside her crease in a possibly match-defining decision.
There will be more twists and turns to come in a season when the opening weekend featured a six hit with a broken bat and then shortly after being derailed by one of its highest profile players set to miss the remainder of the matches due to a dog bite, truly anything could happen. With many more verses of the song set to be written and those big stadium matches approaching, the culmination of this season should finally see crowds worthy of this incredible spectacle.
