What is Big Bash League ?

Attendance for IPL matches in the big cricketing cities of Kolkata and Mumbai regularly topped 30,000, often more than the total crowd for five days of Test cricket, while major commercial sponsors clamoured to back IPL franchises.

The Big Bash League replaced the previous competition, the KFC Twenty20 Big Bash, and features eight city-based franchises instead of the six state teams which had participated previously.

Players such as Dhoni and Virat Kohli, who succeeded Dhoni as captain of India’s Test side when the former retired from Test play at the end of 2014, earned more than $2 million each for one IPL season and at least as much from commercial endorsements.

The competition has been sponsored by fast food chicken outlet KFC since its inception. It is one of the two T20 cricket, alongside the Indian Premier League, to feature amongst the Top 10 Most Attended Sport Leagues in the world.

In early 2016 the ICC proposed that the 10 Test-playing countries, with the addition perhaps of Ireland and Afghanistan, be divided into two divisions with a regular structure of matches—one series at home and one away every two years—and a system of promotion and relegation.

BBL matches are played in Australia during the southern hemisphere summer, in the months of December, January and February.

The Big Bash League squads for the 2018-19 season have been confirmed.
BBL squads consist of 18 players, two of which can be overseas-based players.

It was suggested that this program would give more meaning to each individual Test match and each series. Whether it would bring the crowds back to Test cricket, however, was a matter for debate.

While each club has to meet the December 8 deadline, they can call up extra players throughout the season in the event of injuries or the loss of squad members for other reasons, such as international selection.

The best players still wanted to be defined by their statistics in Test cricket and not by the figures at the bottom of their bank balance.

The eight Big Bash teams that contest the competition are the Adelaide Strikers, Brisbane Heat, Hobart Hurricanes, Melbourne Renegades, Melbourne Stars, Perth Scorchers, Sydney Sixers and Sydney Thunder.

The key issue for the ICC and the national governing bodies of the sport was to create a balanced schedule so that the top players would not be forced to choose.

Out of the eight teams in the tournament, five have won the title at least once. The Perth Scorchers are the most successful team in the league's short history, winning the title three times including consecutively for two years and have reached the final of the tournament in five of the seven seasons.

The other four teams which have won the title are the Adelaide Strikers, Sydney Sixers, Brisbane Heat and Sydney Thunder. The current champions are the Adelaide Strikers.

Before 2014, the top two teams in the tournament used to qualify for the Champions League Twenty20 tournament. It was an annual international Twenty20 competition played between the top domestic teams from various nations. However, the CLT20 became defunct after the 2014 tournament.

A design contest was held in 2011 to determine the design of the Big Bash League trophy. The competition was restricted to Australian designers, with the final design, chosen by the public from a field of three, revealed on 13 December 2011

It had been proposed that the tournament would undergo expansion into more regional areas not supported by international cricket. The expansion was originally planned to be implemented in 2012.

The proposed teams included: Newcastle, Canberra, Geelong, and Gold Coast. A New Zealand-based team was also mentioned as a possibility which would be based at Auckland or Christchurch, but this is unlikely to happen.

In 2015, former Black Caps captain and Melbourne Stars coach Stephen Fleming suggested the expansion of the tournament to include New Zealand teams and become a trans-Tasman competition. He said an expansion into New Zealand would be widely supported by locals.

His views were also supported by Brisbane Heat coach and former Black Caps captain Daniel Vettori.[12] Melbourne Renegades chief executive Stuart Coventry also stated that he wants Cricket Australia to grant each club a fifth home fixture next season.

In 2016, Anthony Everard, head of the BBL, flagged the league's intentions to approach expansion through a soft launch. He stated the short to medium term goal was to schedule BBL games involving existing franchises in regional markets before potentially adding new teams after the 2017/18 season when the broadcast deal expired.

He also indicated the regional markets of Canberra, Geelong and Gold Coast will likely host games during the soft launch period. On 27 January 2017, Everard announced an extra eight matches would be added to the 2017/18 season and implored each existing franchise to look at new markets when considering where the extra games would be played

In the lead up to BBL08 the league made a controversial decision to introduce a bat flip instead of a coin flip to decide who would bat/bowl first. This decision was met with mixed opinion with some claiming that it made the league to casual, while some people were happy with the introduction of the bat flip as it more resonated with backyard cricket players

Former women's Test captain and Head of Brisbane's Centre of Excellence, Belinda Clark, revealed on 19 January 2014 that planning for a women's BBL was in its early stages but could become a reality very soon. She stated that the proposal was being considered due to the huge rise in television ratings in the BBL 03 season and the rise in women's cricket popularity.

On 19 February 2015, Cricket Australia announced that a Women's Big Bash League (WBBL) would commence in the 2015–16 season, with teams aligned to the men's competition. It was announced that the teams would share the names and colours of the existing men's BBL teams, meaning that there would be two teams from Sydney and Melbourne and one team from Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Hobart.