The Big Bash League

Steps being taken to improve the Domestic Player Pool...

Early on in the T20 franchise league journey, the Big Bash was renowned as being one of the best T20 leagues in the world - arguably second to the IPL. However, a number of factors have caused the tournament issues, and I want to focus on one of these - a potentially dwindling quality of domestic players.

It can never be of benefit to a T20 league if the host country’s marquee international players are not fully available for the duration of the tournament. Look at an array of the leagues worldwide and the common denominator among those with a strong fanbase is the constant availability of domestic superstars - IPL, PSL, CPL, SA20 all have these. The Big Bash doesn’t have this, and it’s a major hurdle in terms of growing the league and success in a highly competitive franchise league market. In my view, it’s also something which The Hundred needs to address, and quickly.

Of course, on-pitch success isn’t solely based on big names, and stars can be made as well. The problem is that in Australian domestic cricket, there hasn’t been a regular feeder T20 league into the Big Bash, like there has been for example in the IPL (Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy), the Hundred (T20 Blast) and other leagues such as the PSL and SA20 to name just two.

This lack of T20 competition makes talent ID and roster construction (both visually and via data) much trickier, and also means that some domestic players only play decent-level T20 for the Big Bash alone in a season, which can’t be of benefit in evolving their game in the shortest format. While boundary-hitting isn’t as easy in the BBL compared to some other leagues, there are an array of domestic batters who have such mediocre boundary-hitting numbers that they’d be very unlikely to get a domestic contract in many another countries.

So, it’s great to see there being interest in looking at some ideas to change this. The KFC T20 Max tournament in Queensland has highlighted a number of players in recent years who have gone on to be assets for Big Bash and overseas teams (several notable examples being Josh Brown and Spencer Johnson).

There is also a Sydney-Thunder run tape ball competition starting today, and the Top End T20 league has just concluded as well. This tournament enabled higher-profile domestic players to get some game time early in the season, and also featured teams from Pakistan (A) and Bangladesh (A).

The quality and choices of players participating in the Top End league was mixed (there were some players at BBL teams in the tournament who have a very low, if not zero chance of a successful BBL career) but it did enable higher-profile domestic players to get some game time early in the season, such as Kane Richardson, D’Arcy Short and Will Sutherland.

Furthermore, the tournament also allowed teams an opportunity to assess young high-potential players such as Teague Wyllie, Liam Blackford, Raf MacMillan and Harry Dixon, to see if they are ready to make the step up to Big Bash level in the upcoming 2024/25 season.

Given the lack of depth in the domestic lists for a lot of BBL teams, these tournaments should be treated as a major hunting ground for potential talent with a higher ceiling than some of the tried, tested and failed domestic players who regularly feature in the BBL.

In particular, if I was scouting for a BBL team, I’d be looking at high intent batters with power, high quality spinners and pacers with death bowling skills - three skillsets which I think are often lacking from the domestic player pool in the Big Bash.

It wouldn’t take long to build a model which can translate performances in these lower-level T20 tournaments to the Big Bash, as well as some additional quality filters in order to get an accurate grasp of the players with potential to take the step up into the Big Bash. It will be fascinating to see which BBL teams take the initiative in this area.

Anyone interested in discussing how I can help their team with strategic management and data-driven analysis can get in touch at sportsanalyticsadvantage@gmail.com.