Cricket Australia’s Twenty20 franchise tournament, the Big Bash League, surged into a third eventful week, "starting with a world record crowd for a domestic game of the shortest form:" 80,000 on a balmy Saturday evening at the Melbourne Cricket Ground for the game between ready-made "crosstown rivals" the Stars and the Renegades, according to Gideon Haigh of the LONDON TIMES. Not only did "more than a million watch at home, but more than 400,000 had already tuned in for the curtain-raiser: a Women’s Big Bash League game showcasing the distaff versions of the same clubs." A "silly-season social-media storm then made a hashtag hero" of a 10-year-old boy "eating a whole watermelon in range of the camera" -- "Watermelon Boy" has now attracted 6 million Google hits. The news was not "all good." One of the Stars' sponsors collapsed; "soi-disant Universe Boss Chris Gayle attempted a corny flirtation with a nonplussed female reporter and was heavily fined after issuing a no-apology apology." The cricket, meanwhile, "fluctuated between the exhilarating and the pretty mundane." Yet "somehow this was all grist to the BBL’s mighty mill, mixing the dramatic and the confected, the funny and the inane, and this summer well and truly overshadowing" the deeds of Australia’s Test team. After all, 250 sixes bashed into 300,000 paying spectators "can’t be wrong." Also "loving it" is the Ten Network, which bought the rights for five years in June '13 for A$100M, and which covers it with the "right mix of jocularity and geekiness, Ricky Ponting having become far and away Australia’s best commentator." Yet the "real stars are the fans." In "one respect it is a tribute to the deep and abiding Australian love of cricket." Make the game accessible, regular and cheap, "it seems, and the public will turn up and tune in almost irrespective of who is playing -- certainly the television audiences fluctuate remarkably little, suggestive of people following the event rather than events per se." In another respect, the BBL reflects a "public desire to be part of a success, forming, as it were, a virtuous circle: fans come because of the publicity and form part of the publicity themselves." There "is risk, too." For all the BBL’s success, int'l cricket is "still what keeps the lights on at Cricket Australia." Domestic cricket has a "long way to go to match it." There is talk of more day-night Test cricket, including for the Ashes in '17-18. But the game "could look quite different by then." It "already looks different from three weeks ago" (LONDON TIMES, 1/11).
GAYLE'S COMMENTS 'AVOIDABLE': The IANS reported Int'l Cricket Council CEO Dave Richardson said on Monday that Gayle’s "controversial post-match comments" could have been avoided, adding the game "will hardly be affected by the controversy." Richardson: "Gayle comments in BBL could have been avoided. But I think cricket does not need to worry about it. Cricket can easily move on from here on without worrying." Richardson also spoke about "the growth of women viewership and their involvement in the sport, which is a big plus for the game." He said, "Of the viewership of ICC events, 40 percent of them are women and it is much higher when it comes to T20s. It is a strategy to engage women in the game more through T20. It is not about females watching the game but about world audience watching women play" (IANS, 1/11).
