Is the WBBL ready for big stadiums? We’re about to find out

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Key points

• The WBBL season starts on Thursday when the Sydney Sixers play the Melbourne Stars.
• A new pay deal means the players will be earning more money than ever before, and plans are afoot for the winning team to compete in Champions League-style tournament next year.
• West Indian superstar Hayley Matthews (Melbourne Renegades) and England’s Nat Sciver-Brunt (Perth Scorchers) are two of the big-name overseas recruits.
• In late November, WBBL games will be played at some of Australia’s biggest sports stadiums: the MCG, Adelaide Oval and SCG.

Ahead of the latest edition of the Women’s Big Bash League starting on Thursday, here’s a close look at some of the main players, the key themes and a few pointers to the future of the women’s game here and overseas.

The captain

Hayley Matthews has already put in her nomination for the innings of the season; a spectacular century to guide the West Indies to a win over Australia at North Sydney Oval that was as brilliant as it was unexpected.

Hayley Matthews feasted on Australia’s lapses with the ball and in the field.Credit: Getty

That performance, and a string of others that have seen her win eight consecutive player-of-the-match awards in Twenty20 games, made Matthews a logical choice to step in for Sophie Molineux as captain of the Melbourne Renegades.

At 25, Matthews represents the best and brightest of the women’s global game. She will be among the most-watched talents at this edition of the WBBL. And the evidence of her recent West Indies displays suggests that by adding the captaincy to her duties, the Renegades can leap into finals contention after finishing second-last in 2022.

“Honestly, the leadership of the team has definitely helped me to take responsibility of my game,” Matthews has said.

The stadiums

When Australia’s best players came home from the inaugural women’s Indian Premier League earlier this year, they spoke in awed tones about the experience of playing to packed venues.

It was, for members of the Australian team that had won the T20 World Cup in front of 86,000 spectators at the MCG in March 2020, like getting that sort of adrenaline rush night after night.

So it is that the WBBL is dreaming big this season, scheduling a trio of matches as a “Stadium Series” in the final round, at the Adelaide Oval, the MCG and the SCG on November 24, 25 and 26.

Katy Perry with the triumphant Australian team after they won the T20 World Cup final at the MCG.Credit: Getty Images

For Ellyse Perry, this is the next step for the competition: already the best broadcaster property in women’s sport in Australia, the tournament must strive to convert those audiences into attendees.

“I think the really obvious evolution of the WBBL is to start playing more fixtures at the top stadia in the country, and attracting really big crowds with that,” Perry said.

“A lot has been made of the attraction the Matildas garnered throughout the World Cup and what they were able to achieve from that point of view was unbelievable and unparalleled and would be really hard to match for a long period of time.

“But I think it’s set the standard for all competitions to make sure we’re pushing to fill stadiums.”

In 2022, research commissioned by CA had found that while the audiences for the WBBL and BBL were healthy, they were far more casual in nature than their football-code equivalents.

Bridging that gap will be key to getting crowds to turn up.

The draft stink

There was no bigger name missing from the inaugural overseas draft or the WBBL than Nat Sciver-Brunt, by far England’s most damaging cricketer of the moment.

After previously playing for the Melbourne Stars, Sciver-Brunt was deemed unavailable by the ECB due to her recovery from a knee problem.

When, some weeks later, Sciver-Brunt’s recovery was progressing better than first thought, the Perth Scorchers swooped in to sign her after the draft, having had salary cap room freed up by the withdrawal of another England player, Danni Wyatt, due to fatigue.

It’s a sequence that stuck in the craw of Meg Lanning, who is making her own comeback from personal health issues to lead the Stars.

“As a club, as the Stars, I certainly feel like we didn’t get the chance to exercise our retention rights that we would have had for her had she nominated for the draft instead of coming in this way,” Lanning said this week.

Meg Lanning in the WPL final earlier this year.Credit: AP Photo

“Not only does that impact us this year, but moving forward as well now because Perth have retention rights to her. It’s frustrating because I think that the goalposts seem to shift a little bit.”

While a curious sequence, it did not break any competition rules. In fact, the Stars had also made a direct overseas signing of their own outside the draft, securing the services of Sophia Dunkley via an avenue that allows players to avoid the draft and choose their preferred club, albeit at a reduced salary.

The winners

As a consequence of the pay deal peacefully struck between Cricket Australia and the Australian Cricketers Association earlier this year, WBBL contracts have jumped in value.

The top tier of players will earn better than $100,000 for this tournament due to a salary cap that has doubled in value.

Kim Garth of the Melbourne Stars, Heather Graham of the Hobart Hurricanes, Jemma Barsby of the Adelaide Strikers, Jess Jonassen of the Brisbane Heat, Hannah Darlington of the Sydney Thunder (L-R) Georgia Wareham of the Melbourne Renegades, Ellyse Perry of the Sydney Sixers, and Alana King of the Perth Scorchers.Credit: Getty

Combined with the overseas player draft, these terms have deepened the well of the competition’s talent still further, while also sending a strong signal to the rest of the sporting ecosystem about the benefits of choosing cricket.

At a time when AFLW audiences have trended down, and the nation’s netballers are in pay dispute with a cash-strapped national governing body, it means that female cricketers at home and abroad have emerged as winners even before a ball is bowled.

“It’s a fantastic advancement for the competition, it’s also a trend for competitions around the world now,” Perry said. “If you look at the Hundred [in England] and also the WPL [in India], there’s really great opportunities for female cricketers to earn a really great amount of money playing in these competitions.”

The future

It was during the dual Ashes series in England earlier this year that this masthead reported early talks about the formation of a women’s Champions League to be contested by the best performing clubs from the WBBL, the WPL and the Hundred.

Those talks have progressed, and now only an agreed calendar spot needs to be found for the tournament to start as soon as 2024. Talks about that schedule room are likely to happen when chiefs of the sport’s governing bodies in Australia, England and India meet towards the end of the men’s ODI World Cup next month.

“From a players’ perspective, why not?” Alyssa Healy said when asked about the concept. “I watched the men’s one 10 years ago now, watched the Sixers boys go over there and do something pretty special. So it’d be a fantastic initiative.

“I’m sure there’d be a gap in [the schedule] somewhere. At the moment, there’s probably some space in around the women’s IPL that could probably be utilised, but then you’re fighting up against the big [men’s] IPL, so it’d be interesting to see where that discussion lands.”

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