Big Bash out to save cricket

It’s meant to be the saviour of Australian cricket.

When the Big Bash League opens in Sydney on Friday night, Cricket Australia will be hoping it opens the game up to a new generation it fears may be lost to the national sport.

But even before the first fireworks go off and Shane Warne makes a showbiz entrance back onto the MCG, the redesigned eight-team BBL has caused chaos.

To make way for the Twenty20 league, the Sheffield Shield has been forced into a seven-week hiatus, leaving no domestic first-class cricket in Australia throughout the four-Test series against India.

Some pundits fear the precedence placed on the BBL will doom, rather than save, Australian cricket.

The altered priorities have already had a casualty.

Out-of-form Test opener Phil Hughes has quit his BBL contract with Sydney Thunder and will have to try to rediscover his touch with his Sydney grade club Western Suburbs.

Australia’s new coach Mickey Arthur says the BBL is a hurdle and captain Michael Clarke exposed his frustrations that axed Test players only have the BBL for the next two months.

And the Argus report said Test cricket had to take priority - which, by extension, also means enabling the Sheffield Shield to cultivate Test players.

But CA has invested enormous faith and money into its version of the wildly successful Indian Premier League, five years after the Indians threw millions of dollars at players for their six-week tournament.

CA Chief Executive James Sutherland admits the BBL will run at a loss in its first year, but the money it will generate in the long term and the interest it will promote are vital to the survival of the traditional game. Sutherland has said Tests and one-dayers are not enough, and the BBL can take cricket to all Australians.

“We are not trying to compromise Test or international cricket with Twenty20. But the thing about Big Bash is that it is made for television and made for entertainment,” he told the Australian Financial Review magazine this month.

But compromise seems unavoidable.

Test players will appear for their BBL teams this weekend before reverting to Test mode to prepare for a tough series against India. Throughout the Indian series, the massively promoted BBL will clash with Test matches, being played at night in different cities and competing for attention.

There’s no doubt it will attract plenty of attention.

Warne’s return to Australian cricket for the Melbourne Stars is the marketing coup of the summer and when he turns out on Saturday night at the MCG against Sydney Thunder, there’ll be as much focus on his fiancée Liz Hurley in the stands as on his blistered spinning fingers.

Warne’s not the only old timer enticed out of retirement. Matthew Hayden will open for Brisbane Heat at the SCG on Friday night, up against the Sydney Sixers leg-spinner Stuart MacGill and paceman Brett Lee.

Flamboyant West Indian Chris Gayle heads the international contingent at the Thunder, while South African Herschelle Gibbs and England’s Paul Collingwood will play for Perth Scorchers and hard hitting Kiwi Brendon McCullum will form a powerful opening partnership with Hayden at the Heat.

Heat, Scorchers, Thunder, Sixers. They all sound like baseball teams. But it’s cricket’s future that’s in their hands.