Cricket Australia is killing the golden goose that is the BBL

Players and broadcasters are complaining, the pitches are poor, the crowds and ratings are down, the competition stretched longer than ever.

Chris Lynn of the Brisbane Heat. Picture: Getty Images

The players and broadcasters are complaining, the pitches are poor, the crowds and ratings are down, the competition stretched longer than ever before and the finish line still weeks away. All that aside, how good is the Big Bash League?

Sorry, great product that it is, it’s just not as good as it was and a lot of key people are concerned with its trajectory.

A million fans will have attended games at the end of the month and that is something nobody could ever have dreamt of a decade ago. They build it and the people came.

But one of the BBL’s stars, Chris Lynn, is complaining and says other players are too. That’s unprecedented. Another star of the competition said yesterday he felt like administrators were killing the golden goose.

The big international stars have stayed away because the completion is too long and the pay comparatively poor — AB de Villiers turned down the BBL because he could get $450,000 for half the work in the Bangladesh Premier League (about three times what he would get here).

Broadcasters aren’t happy either because the games seem to lack competition and definition. Selectors aren’t happy because of the hole in the first-class domestic season and the pressure placed on them by franchises.

It’s still good to see the demographic who attends. Bringing women and children to the game in greater numbers was critical. It’s still good to see their enthusiasm and there’s nothing wrong with a format that gives profile to domestic cricketers.

But it’s hard to find anybody apart from those whose job it is to defend the game who think that this year’s competition holds a candle to previous incarnations.

Attendances are still higher than many days of Test cricket. Ratings are good but the networks who paid a premium for the product are grumbling about the quality of matches.

The BBL has got too big too fast. The season before last there were 35 games, it went up to 43 last year and is now at 59. It’s groaning like a bloated man at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Eyes that were once wide with anticipation are now bloodshot and a previously empty stomach is roiling.

Dean Kino, a sports lawyer and former Cricket Australia counsel who was involved with the establishment of the IPL, tweeted yesterday that those tournaments “discovered the optimal season was one that kept the fans wanting more” which was a factor of “time and number of games”.

Some argue the WBBL has as many games, but only 23 are broadcast which keeps fans wanting more and the league sits more easily alongside the domestic first-class fixture. The big local stars are available because it rarely clashes with any international series. The competition is elite and, the money is so good by comparison that New Zealand players turn their back on their domestic tournament to take part in the Australian version. The three finals over recent weekends have also provided three highly competitive games with climactic finishes.

BBL boss Kim McConnie made an extraordinary defence of the expansion recently. “It’s difficult to say it’s too long when you compare it to the NRL and AFL and the overall summer of cricket,” McConnie said. “We actually think it’s just an adjustment. We’ll look back in a couple of years and go this is the turning point that really increased the value of BBL. I think it’s too early to say it’s too long.”

The AFL and NRL has a longer season with more games but they are broadcast across the weekend. Both leagues have found anything outside Friday, Saturday and Sunday is stretching the friendship.

The first step in fixing a problem is to acknowledge you have one.