The growing appeal of Australia's domestic Twenty20 Big Bash League "was underlined when more than 80,000 fans turned up at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) for a match on Saturday night," according to Nick Mulvenney of REUTERS.
The crowd attracted to Australia's biggest arena for Melbourne derby between the Renegades and the Stars "surpassed the previous record of 52,637 before a ball was bowled and 80,883 came through the gates in total."
Stars coach Stephen Fleming, whose team won the match by seven wickets, thought the attendance would send "shockwaves" around the cricketing world.
Fleming: "There's a lot of talk about the different formats of the game but when you're getting crowds of 80,000, it's sending a pretty strong message. It's just extraordinary where this competition is going. You've got quality cricket but the crowd support... it's astonishing" (REUTERS, 1/3).
NEW RECORD: In Melbourne, Greg Baum wrote that "it was almost certainly the biggest crowd for a domestic cricket match anytime, anywhere." It "was bigger than this season's Boxing Day crowd, and for that matter last season's, too." It was bigger than any Collingwood-Carlton Australian Football League game "for the past two years, once the gold standard for derby-style matches in Melbourne." Sheer crowd size, special effects and gimcrackery "were only the half of it." As a juncture in cricket and sporting history, this night "was comparable with one in Sydney in November, 1978, when such a crowd turned up unannounced for an Australia-West Indies World Series Cricket game at the SCG when Kerry Packer threw open the gates." It was the moment WSC "caught on in the public imagination, and thereafter its success was assured, and the face of cricket permanently changed."
Now, it is "mutating again." In the swirl, it is "not clear for whom the implications of this night are most acute." Is it Test cricket, which has "looked like an orphan this summer?" It is a more complete game, but "does that matter any more?" Is it the A-League, which is "in direct competition with cricket and whose crowd numbers have stagnated this season?" Hell, is it even AFL, which "has a longstanding monopoly on the young sporting talent in this town, but for how much longer?" (THE AGE, 1/3). In Sydney, Robert Craddock asked will the Big Bash "be the centrepiece of the summer?"
Will Test cricket "be like the old patriarch who once set up the family business but is now happy to potter around each day, go to the big board meetings (the Ashes) and let the kids handle the day-to-day stuff?" Crowd figures "have been rising and records broken in most cities this summer." The progress "has been steady and sustainable towards the stunning peak of Saturday night, not entirely surprising because much like Americans, Australia loves competitions featuring Us versus Us because we know we will get a good game." The two games "may end up sustaining each other in a father-son sort of way." The challenge for Cricket Australia, which has done a wonderful job with the Big Bash, "is not to try and improve the format but have the courage to leave it as it is" (DAILY TELEGRAPH, 1/3).
EXPANDING FOOTPRINT: ESPN's Daniel Brettig reported CA CEO James Sutherland insisted that the burgeoning Big Bash League "is acting as a complementary, not competing, agent to the traditional Test summer." While it has been suggested more than once that the BBL is detracting from Tests, Sutherland said that the tournament "was always intended to complement the five-day game -- and that it had given CA the ability to draw crowds across the country in ways previously unheard of during the international programme." He said,
"One of the things that people forget from time to time is the thing the BBL has allowed us to do, [it has] allowed us to provide cricket content in other parts of Australia during the Test cricket season." Sutherland added, "There's no doubt the BBL is on a trend line upwards in terms of its popularity and part of that is an awareness thing. I think there's a growing awareness and a growing allegiance to teams and the whole concept of the BBL." As for the crowds and broadcast audience numbers generated over the past 48 hours, Sutherland "was understandably chuffed." He said, "To have more than 100,000 people attend Big Bash League matches on the same day was a great occasion for our sport and a genuine milestone in the short history of the league" (ESPN 1/3).
SYDNEY DERBY: In Sydney, Tom Decent reported the Sydney Sixers "are expecting to smash the SCG domestic crowd record and potentially welcome up to 42,000 fans through the turnstiles at their next Sydney derby as Big Bash League fever grips the country." There have been 15,750 tickets already sold -- 5,000 more than last season's match, which attracted 36,487 people -- "two weeks out from the Sydney derby between the Sixers and Thunder on January 16. As the dust settles in the wake of 80,883 fans cramming into the MCG on Saturday evening, Sydney Sixers GM Dom Remond said ticket sales were "phenomenal" and on track to break all records, providing members showed up.
So keen are the Sixers "to make the fixture a sell-out, they are buying back corporate hospitality tickets -- normally given to members from the SCG Trust -- and selling them as premium seating in a bid to increase the number of tickets on sale to the public" (SMH, 1/3).
