ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
Cricket Australia was pleased to announce this morning the upcoming schedule for the 2022-23 Big Bash League that’s set to kick off in just a few weeks time.
There will be 944 matches between the 8 sides, with each team having 118 games against each other for their chance to go into the 32-game finals series.
Director of Explosive Cricket at the nation’s peak cricketing body, James Hornady, made the announcement in Brisbane.
“This summer, there will be a game of brain-bending, family-friendly T20 cricket starting every 90 minutes,” he said.
“For nine months. This summer will be the most exciting Big Bash League to date and will deliver outstanding opportunities for fans and commercial partners alike. I would like to thank the state and federal governments for coming to the table on this, they’ve been a great help and this level of competition wouldn’t be possible without them,”
“Every team will have 118 chances to better every other side in this competition, leaving no doubt who the best team in the country is. The competition will start on the 30th of July and run until we have a winner or the last player breaks down with injury. That’s what makes this BBL completely different to other competitions of this type around the world.”
However, the schedule has been met with criticism from playing grounds and their families, with some telling The Advocate that playing 944-games of cricket in nine-months will have “dire consequences”.
Malcolm McMullin, from the Australian Cricket Players’ Guild, explained that the human body is not conditioned to play that much cricket, let alone watch that much cricket.
“Let me play Devil’s Advocate here for a minute,” he said.
“I think this is less about fostering talent and supporting grassroots cricket and more about how many advertisers they can swoon into buying ad space on the boundary rope. That’s just my opinion. They’re going to effectively be forcing players to perform in up to seven games a day for 38 weeks. That’s almost 18 hours of bowling, batting and fielding,”
“In terms of workload, there’s kids in the Congo hosing cobalt out of hillsides for warlords and yuppie Teslas that aren’t working that hard. I don’t think it’s sustainable. What if they get picked for the Test team? That’d be their only salvation from what I see as certain death by exhaustion.”
More to come.
