Cricket Australia gets it wrong….again.

Cricket Australia has announced its chosen eight teams for next year’s Big Bash. Now I don’t really care about the success of the competition anyhow, I agree with John Harms’ comments that T20 is undermining traditional cricket. Nevertheless, if you were going to base a competition on “city” teams rather than the traditional State teams you would think you would base the teams on real places. Not CA they are going to base the Melbourne and Sydney teams on venues!

When it was announced that Victoria and NSW would get two teams in the T20 competition most sportsfans would have assumed that the second teams would be based on the states’ second cities and indeed Geelong and Newcastle tendered for the second teams. Instead CA has decided that Melbourne’s teams would be based on the MCG and Docklands and Sydney’s on the SCG and Homebush. At least the Sydney teams could be taken to represent the East and West of the City. But what do Docklands and the G represent?

Both venues are on the edge of the CBD. The only significant difference is that one venue has a better surface and isn’t named after a dodgy airline but that in itself isn’t much of a reason to barrack for the MCG based team over the Docklands team. Presumably they will both be called “Melbourne” and then be given silly pseudo-American “brand” names. Look forward to the Melbourne Sloggers versus the Melbourne Jets. Geelong vs Melbourne would have been the basis for a contest. MCG vs Docklands? Who cares.

Comments

  1. Dave, I’m with you.

    They lost an opportunity by not picking Geelong. They would have brought the whole Western District onside.

  2. If we’d won the fifa world cup then Skilled would have had the lights it needed.

    The issue is most of the games will be played after work hours at night, and Geelong’s stadium is the issue here.

    Agree that the Docklands v MCG thing is hardly going to turn people on or off, though it would be great if one of them ended up being VicMetro and one being VicCountry

    Eg Bush and the Burbs

  3. Although a smaller sample the Tasmanian model for footy and cricket give a hint about the economic rationist arguement against decentralisation of sport. Sorry, I meant to say main stream economic indicator activity. How silly of me.

    People are voting with their feet and will not travel to see something that they do not associate with. They can’t even get 10,000 people on the opening day (Saturday) of a test match in Hobart when a local hero captains the national team. And we are quite sports mad in Tassy.

    Cricket Australia will get away with it with the boimass in Melb and Sydney but they have clearly indicated that they only think of the bottom line.

    All the big bash is is another one of those cruddy fifth rate commercial television shows that are apparently the main menu for the XXXL generation of half wits that appear to under pin the grand plan by our movers and shakers who allow it to happen in their race to dumb down the populace to stay in power.

    Comerade Phantom.

  4. Dave – CA has said it is hoping to develop a football type rivalry between the teams. The only way a rivalry could exist would be if either the Docklands or MCG teams wore a Collingwood jumper.

  5. Damo Balassone says

    They’ve stuffed again up big time. The only way to make any domestic cricket competition work in this country is to have one team in each city and try and get the interstate rivalry going e.g. Vic vs. Tassie got 43,000 last year to a game.

    Melbourne is potentially the biggest crowd-puller, but now people will be confused by the concept and will not be naturally aligned with a team. Ditto for Sydney.

    If they had of chosen 1 team in each city and another 2 in NZ, this comp might have worked.

    They should have also scrapped this 2 innings 45 over rubbish that they are currently playing. What a joke!

  6. Why don’t they cut to the case and just call it “Kentucky Fried Cricket”… would you like fries with that?

  7. Carmel

    I reckon we should start a campaign to call all elite cricket Kentucky Fried Cricket.

  8. That is piss funny Carmel.

    If CA had marketers with your wit then, ironically, we wouldn’t be spitting the chips at ’em that they well and bloody truly deserve.

    Cheers

  9. The scary thing is Carmel, there are probably PR hacks considering whether or not this is desired outcome. And another group lining up to claim your credit.

    Sounds like a half-baked, rather than fried idea. I like it like that! (Or whatever catchphrase clever cola companies are currently using).

  10. Mick Jeffrey says

    There was nothing wrong with how the comp was run as it was. Sure, expand to a 10 game league if you must BUT no-one will care about the franchise model.

  11. folks… interesting points made and Gus, it is scary… mmm… now let’s see: cricket has an established broad-based audience, across all demographics, thousands of players city and country… all those consumers (licking of lips) – how about tasty KFCricket bites – they’ll buy that! Speak up… because it’s just not ‘the real thing’.

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