Australia BBL News – BBL’s early start in early goal may result in overseas players staying longer

The BBL is designed to be one of the earliest starts and earliest finishes in the competition’s history, with the 13th round of the tournament taking place from December 7 to January 24, and could allow overseas players to sit out most of the season after retention issues. talent last year.

Australia’s men’s domestic international schedule is the main reason why the tournament starts so early in December and finishes on a Wednesday in late January, four days before the end of the school holidays on 28 January.

Australia will play the first Test of the home summer against Pakistan in Perth on 14-18. december The BBL starts with seven prime-time matches over seven days from December 7 to December 13, but stops completely for the Perth Test before starting on December 19.

Australia are also scheduled to play a day-night Test against the West Indies in Brisbane from January 25. The BBL decided to move the season forward to avoid the final clashing with that fixture.

The advantage of the previous season means that foreign players can participate in more tournaments. Last season, the first since the BBL introduced the overseas draft, began on December 13 and ran until February 4.

But with South Africa’s T20 and ILT20 starting on January 11 and 14 last year, and offering much bigger salaries to overseas players, the BBL saw a mass shift in its marquee overseas deals mid-season. Faf du Plessis played just seven matches for Perth Scorchers and Rashid Khan played just eight matches for Adelaide Strikers before heading to South Africa. Trent Boult played eight games for the Melbourne Stars while Andre Russell played four for the Melbourne Renegades before heading to the ILT20 in the UAE. Even Australia’s Chris Lynn missed the last three matches of the Strikers season to make it to the UAE. The strikers lost their last three matches without Rashid and Lynn missing out on the final.

The dates for the 2023 SA T20 and ILT20 have yet to be announced and the BBL has not moved the season specifically to avoid a clash with those leagues. But BBL chief executive Alistair Dobson hoped an earlier start and finish to the tournament could mean overseas players could stay for most of the season.

“We’re optimistic again about getting the biggest name players from around the world to play,” Dobson said. “We are talking to a number of agents at the moment who are open to draft candidates. And the early signs are that the players are really keen to play again. I think starting a week earlier than maybe normal would be a good opportunity to get the players to play most, if not all, of the BBL -season again. Early discussions with agents and players are quite positive.”

The date for the BBL draft is due to be finalized in the coming weeks, but is likely to be held in late August, as it was last year, and will be combined with the WBBL overseas draft, which will be held for the first time. .

The draft rules, standings, and player contract bands are set very similar to last year, although there will be slight changes to platinum player salaries depending on how many matches they are available for. A platinum player will earn AUD$420,000, down from AUD$340,000 last year, although that can be reduced to AUD$360,000 if he plays less than eight games. The gold ribbon goes up to AUD$300,000, the silver to AUD$200,000 and the bronze to AUD$100,000.

The BBL’s salary cap has risen to A$3 million from A$1.9 million as part of Cricket Australia’s new five-year memorandum of understanding with the Australian Cricketers’ Association.

The BBL season has also been shortened a year earlier than expected due to CA’s new broadcast rights deal with existing partners Channel Seven and Foxtel.

The old deal expires at the end of the 2023-24 season and was to include a 56-match home and away BBL season (14 games for each team) and a five-team, five-match finals series. But the new deal has been pushed forward a year to return to a 40-game regular season (10 for each team) with only four teams playing in the finals, the same structure as the 2017-18 season.

The new structure means that not all teams get to play each other twice. Dobson confirmed that there was no specific formula to determine which teams would play each other twice, apart from scheduling the two derbies in Melbourne and Sydney.

“We purposely didn’t set any parameters or guidelines for it,” Dobson said. “Given the unique considerations this year around venue availability and the shape of the season, we left ourselves as much freedom as possible to make sure we got the biggest games and the best games in the right places. We’ll see how that plays out and how it plays out over the course of the season and whether there are any other guidelines to be adopted going forward or let’s just see how it shapes up each season.

“It’s been a number of years since we’ve had to have a schedule where everybody doesn’t play each other twice. We looked at it closely in terms of when we got to those last games, who played who. But a lot of times it wrote itself.”

The BBL has a problem around the finals series with Adelaide Oval and the Gabba unavailable due to Tests between Australia and the West Indies. The BBL is working with both the Strikers and Brisbane Heat on alternative venues if they are to host the final.

There are only five doubleheaders and no triple headers on the schedule. There is also no game on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, but neither has been ruled out as an option in the future.