Change the rules to improve the BBL: Melbourne Stars coach Trent Woodhill wants a T20 revolution
No changes of end, remove some of the boundary ropes, five - or 10 - balls an over, 13 man teams, and that’s just for starters: are Trent Woodhill’s plans to improve T20 cricket just crazy enough they might work?
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If Trent Woodhill won Tattslotto tomorrow, his first splurge would be to stage an exhibition match at the MCG that would tear down some of the game’s longest standing traditions.
One of world cricket’s most innovate thinker’s loves Twenty20 cricket and loves franchise cricket. But, in his eyes, Cricket Australia’s Big Bash League is stuck in the past.
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Forget talk about an oversaturation of games and a rain-saturated Grand Final.
It is the product itself that Woodhill - working in high performance on England and Wales Cricket Board’s new 100-ball league - would mess with first.
“I’m not a fan of gimmicks, so any change you make is around high performance,” Woodhill, current Melbourne Stars list manager, told the Herald Sun.
“The 19 changes of ends in a T20 innings bugs the absolute shit out of me. You don’t need it.
“You’re asking fans over the course of a game to watch 38 changes of ends, and all the bullshit that goes with it.
“Changing gloves, drinks, the conferencing … all of this, rather than play. I pay money to watch sport, I like to watch sport. I don’t like to watch conferencing.”
Six-ball overs would be the next to go. After all, cricket started with four-ball overs and Australia introduced eight-ball overs in 1922-23.
Woodhill - a passionate believer in ‘The Hundred’ - said they had it right, where a bowler can bowl either five or 10 consecutive deliveries.
“So Rashid Khan can bowl the first 10 for Adelaide, Peter Siddle can bowl the next five and then Rashid can bowl the next 10,” he said.
“So he’s bowled 20 of the first 25 (the power-play) and he’s done. And then if you want him off the field, bring on a better fielder. So the game is always getting better.”
Without any change of ends, cricket could adopt a baseball-style stadium that would increase crowds by removing a sightscreen and swipe “half an hour, minimum” off drawn-out games.
“Imagine if you kept it at 20 six-ball overs and you instantly took that out? All the fightback is around the pitch deteriorating,” Woodhill said.
“The pitch won’t – when has a pitch ever deteriorated in 40 overs? I’d also have a designated fielder and a designated hitter.
“So each team carries 13 players, and if Chris Gayle or Shane Watson don’t want to field because you think you’re better off with a better fielder, then why wouldn’t you do that?
“A bloke hits a hundred and he should have to go out there and field. Why? I want to see the best fielders.
“You’ll raise the standard of the game. Cricket isn’t an endurance sport, yet we keep trying to make it that.
“You want the best 11 fielders up against the best bowlers up against the best batters. You want players under pressure getting out.”
A run-out triggered the end of Adelaide’s summer, when Callum Ferguson set a trap for Alex Carey, and the sharp fielding focus is why Stars targeted Hilton Cartwright.
Captain Glenn Maxwell said the former Scorcher saved 20 runs in the field, and that’s before he became an unlikely opening batsman.
“He’s the best fielder in the competition,” Woodhill said.
“Sean Abbott – gun, Glenn Maxwell – gun, Stoin (Marcus Stoinis) – gun. But Cartwright’s the best.”
But perhaps Woodhill’s most radical move would be to remove the boundary south of the stumps.
“I’d have a 40m section between fine third man and fine, fine leg that – if the ball goes over the fence it’s still six – but if not you have to run in that part,” Woodhill said.
“So an inside edge for four, or four wides, you have to run them. It would be easy to do, and then you have people chasing after balls, picking up balls, throwing balls.
“If you need four off the last ball and three for a super over and someone gets an inside edge it’s game over. Or, if they have to run them and you have a Cartwright on the boundary it’s (game on).”
A soft fence standing 5m would replace the rope around the ground, and – again, similar to baseball – if a fielder completed a catch while touching the fence the umpire’s finger would go up.
That would erase all those wasted seconds when the TV umpire pores over angles to review boundaries.
“As long as the ball doesn’t land over (the fence), who cares? You’re trying to create less confusion,” Woodhill said.
Think a tail-ender can sky a ball in kamikaze fashion to get the set batter on strike the next ball? Think again, a rule which The Hundred has taken on.
“The new batsman has to face after a wicket, so you get more hat-tricks like Haris Rauf got,” Woodhill said.
“If Chris Gayle’s 80 not-out at the non-striker’s end, and the other bloke’s on naught and hits one straight up and they cross, then Gayle faces up and goes bang, bang, bang.
“How is that fair to the bowler?”
Woodhill would punish wides with a free hit, although if you can land the ball within the 43.2cm tramlines down the leg-side then bad luck to the batter because “that’s a great ball”.
“And I’d get rid of the lbw law where if it pitches outside leg-stump (it’s automatically not-out) … if it’s hitting the stumps it’s out.”
BBL rosters would also be restructured to allow four overseas stars at every franchise (three in the XI) with domestic contracts cut from 16 to 14, shaving off the club cricketers.
“It used to be that when we’d lose all our players to (Australia) duty, the players not playing for Perth were better than our players who were playing,” Woodhill said.
“That’s not good for the competition. The best domestic players need to be playing.”
Originally published as Change the rules to improve the BBL: Melbourne Stars coach Trent Woodhill wants a T20 revolution