Boycott threat by cricket’s biggest states forces women’s T20 change

Australia’s two most populous cricket states, Victoria and NSW, considered boycotting a new women’s Twenty20 tournament and playing matches among themselves before reaching a compromise with Cricket Australia on the competition format for this season.

Initially planned to include one team from each of the six states plus a team from the ACT, the T20 tournament following the shortened Women’s Big Bash League is now set to be played by nine teams. Victoria and NSW will field two teams each, while the ACT and the other states will field a team each.

The WBBL’s changed format for next summer led to a battle between Cricket Australia and its two biggest states.Credit: Getty Images

An announcement about the revised format of the tournament is due to be made later this week. Cricket Australia, Cricket NSW and Cricket Victoria declined to comment.

Three senior cricket sources, speaking on condition of anonymity because negotiations are confidential, confirmed the boycott had been suggested more than once to Cricket Australia and its chief executive Nick Hockley, either side of the new tournament’s initial announcement last month.

One source described the impasse as “a shitfight”.

Victoria’s opposition to the change was driven in part by concerns that it would reduce playing opportunities for fringe players who might otherwise be snapped up by AFLW. NSW, meanwhile, was not enamoured with the idea of ACT Cricket gaining more matches at the expense of its two Sydney-based WBBL clubs.

Around 65 per cent of the professional women’s playing group comes from NSW and Victoria. The two states informally discussed contingency plans for their four WBBL clubs to play games against each other while skipping the state-based tournament.

There was some bewilderment at Cricket Australia about how much the states dug in on the issue, given the long-standing custom of men’s and women’s competitions being played on the basis of one team per state.

The state-based tournament’s introduction and seven-team format were also backed by the Australian Cricketers Association and its chief executive Todd Greenberg, on the basis that it meant more Twenty20 opportunities and helped raise average remuneration to more than $160,000 per year.

It was also pointed out that post-WBBL games will be played at the same time as an international series against India, meaning many of the best players will not be available anyway and so open up spots for those on the fringe.

But Cricket Victoria, whose chief executive Nick Cummins recently agreed to terms for a three-year contract extension, remained implacable in opposition, with support from Cricket NSW.

Sydney Sixers star Ellyse Perry.Credit: Getty

The new, state-based Twenty20 competition was devised to augment the season after Cricket Australia and its broadcasters Seven and Foxtel agreed to reduce the Women’s Big Bash League from 14 games per team to 10, in line with a reduction in games for the men’s BBL ahead of the start of a new broadcast deal this year.

That reduction also eased a scheduling squeeze this year, with the T20 World Cup to be played in October in Bangladesh.

NSW and Victoria argued that with far more female players of all levels in their states, the new competition should be constituted along WBBL lines to maximise opportunities for players who would not make their state first XI sides but would command spots in all other teams.

This is particularly true in the case of the ACT, which has only a small number of top-level women’s players and fewer than half a dozen WBBL contracted players.

Lobbying by the ACT chair Greg Boorer for a bigger role in Australian cricket, including Canberra-based BBL and WBBL teams, was revealed via a parliamentary committee last year.

During his testimony, Boorer suggested that the federal government had the capacity to pressure Cricket Australia into expanding ACT cricket’s role by threatening to reduce funding for the sport.

“It’s not unusual or unprecedented for the federal government to step in and encourage governance reform. It’s happened in football previously,” Boorer told the Joint Standing Committee on the National Capital and External Territories. “A huge amount of government funding goes to Australian cricket.

“It wouldn’t take a huge stretch of imagination, and it certainly wouldn’t cost the federal government any money – just a little bit of time and effort – to appropriately encourage the board of Cricket Australia, and therefore the shareholders of Cricket Australia, to perhaps consider reform in that space.”

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