Bit bummed Behrendorff didn't make the World Cup squad, thought he's been playing really well this season.

Not keen on Tait being there imo.

-PB

Don't think that's the World Cup squad.

Bailey, Khawaja need to be in the squad while Boland & Tait shouldn't be.

Fucckkkkk missed the finish of the game due to futsal.

When I left it was like 90 odd runs off there abouts balls, looked like an atypical "whoever bats second on these fucking roads for pitches wins" type game but holy shit.

-PB

Cricket's Big Bash could fetch $50-60 million in next TV rights deal


by John Stensholt
Cricket Australia will this year assemble one of its most important teams in time for the 2017 season – a team of executives to sell the rights to broadcast cricket on television and over the internet.

Thanks to the stunning success of the Big Bash League the value of those rights is likely to rise dramatically from the last time they were sold two years ago.

The BBL Twenty20 competition has been the hit of the summer. Broadcaster Network Ten got a 15 per cent audience increase compared with a year ago and an average of 1.013 million viewers over more than 30 evenings during summer. Audiences in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide are up a stunning 25 per cent.

Two-and-a-half years after the network was criticised for buying what was until then the exclusive domain of pay-television, the $20 million a year Ten is paying looks a bargain.

So successful has the Big Bash League been that industry analysts said the value of the rights could skyrocket to as much as $50 million to $60 million a year when the next broadcast contract begins in 2018.


Ten still has two more seasons of broadcasting the BBL, but it will face fierce competition to keep the rights it cannily acquired in mid-2013, when it bid what then appeared to be an audacious $550 million over five years for all cricket – Tests, one-day international limited overs matches and the BBL.

Back then, incumbent rights holder Nine Entertainment Co had a "last rights" clause in its contract that allowed it to match Ten's bid. But while then Nine boss David Gyngell had what he described as an "ouch moment" when agreeing to pay $450 million for the international rights, he let Ten have the BBL.


It has since proven to be quite the coup for Ten, with cricket helping the struggling network have a very nice upturn in its ratings numbers.

The party will end on Sunday with the grand final, but Thursday and Friday evening's semi-finals are still expected to rate strongly for Ten against Seven West Media's saturation coverage of the Australian Open tennis even if Australian Lleyton Hewitt's second round match is scheduled for prime-time on Thursday.

But cricket will stay in the minds of Australia's television executives long after the summer ends. After a massive 2015, when billion dollar deals were signed with the AFL and NRL, and even rugby union doubled its rights value, cricket – with apologies to soccer's A-League, which is also in the market for a commercial broadcaster – is the next sports cab off the rank.

Even though Seven is in the second year of a five year deal to telecast the tennis, it will be an interested bidder in the cricket, and Nine and Ten will be extremely keen to at least protect the rights they already have.

That competition should ensure the heated market for sports rights doesn't end any time soon. And it also means that whoever wins – and there is no last rights clause next time around – will face heavy scrutiny from shareholders worried about the balance sheet pressures of paying up big for sport.

Not that it will stop any of the networks signing yet another big cheque for sport.

Think Tait is needed for his Pace.

Watched it from 3 down. They were completely set to go a run a ball for the last 10 overs but looked like they got complacent yet again and brain farted their way to stupid wickets

I love Mel, she seems like an absolute lovely woman.

But she absolutely fucking sucks at her job. She can't say one single sentence without stumbling over her words, not one! Not to mention how awkward she is with Ponting/gilchrist/Waugh... Whatever. How on earth is this woman rated as a good presenter? Can someone please tell me? Or is it... "oh yeah she looks good and is half smart, she will do".

She is a poor presenter in my eyes.

Interesting to see how the Stars go tonight. Can never crack past the Semis.

converting-big-bash-league-fans-to-test-lovers-will-take-a-generation-say-cricket-Australia

Somewhere in the MCG stands on Sunday there will be a kid at the cricket for the first time: a teenager, wowed by the colour, buzz and big hitting, finally giving the game a chance; or perhaps a mother joining her husband and sons to see for herself their fascination with the game.

That they are at the cricket at all, however, is a win for the sport, says Cricket Australia.

If you can imagine cricket as a department store, then Twenty20, with its loud music, pyrotechnics and cheaper tickets, is the $9.99 door front special luring the shopper in to be exposed to the more substantial items inside, Test cricket.


Brotherly love: David and Michael Hussey with the BBL trophy ahead of Sunday's final between the Stars and Thunder.Photo: Getty Images
This will not be easy. It's one thing catching the attention of the curious for three hours, another for them to invest, financially and emotionally, for a full day, let alone five.

Whether or not the Big Bash League will save cricket, assuming the game indeed needs saving, is debatable, but authorities are confident the competition is spreading the gospel.

CA say participation figures have almost doubled from 2010 – the last year before the Big Bash was turned into a city-based competition – to 2015, from 651,871 to 1,208,360. Female participation has more than trebled, from 87,500 to 290,000. Nearly one in four cricket participants are now female, CA say.


Fan favourite: A record crowd of 80,883 for domestic cricket at the MCG.Photo: Supplied
Getting people playing cricket is a key part in CA's growth strategy.

"We're absolutely sure the Big Bash League is driving participation in the game and that itself creates a long-term legacy – to have fans of the game, and fans down the track who will be parents are in exactly the same position," Cricket Australia chief James Sutherland says.

According to CA research, 21 per cent of people attending the BBL last summer were attending elite cricket for the first time. Judging by the massive crowds for BBL05, over 20per cent higher than last summer, there's a strong likelihood many have returned.

Playing the role of selector when it comes to naming the all-star team from the fifth edition of the Big Bash League isn't an easy task, as Daniel Lane discovered.
But how many have converted to Test cricket? CA does not have that data but says it is too "short-term" to look at the issue that way. It will be a slow burn.

"This is generational stuff, this is about making sure the next generation of Australian kids have a deep affinity and affection for the game of cricket," Sutherland says.

"We've always said the Big Bash League is about growing cricket's fan and participant base. It's about casting the net as widely as possible around the community and to give people the opportunity in the first place sample cricket but then to grow a proper interest in the game.

"We've seen metrics that show a lot of people who have come over the last couple of years have been coming to cricket matches for the first time ever.

"It'd be interesting to see at the end of this season whether that sort of rate of turning up for the first time is still as high as it has been or not." The traditionalists have found it harder to accept Twenty20 as a legitimate form of the game, but Sutherland feels the younger generation "honestly believe this is all cricket".

"They compartmentalise it in ways that traditionalists can't," Sutherland, a father of three, says. "They know and understand where it sits, they know and understand that still playing for your country is the ultimate and they have significant respect for those that do."

Sometimes more is less, but cricket is not at that stage yet. Pre-BBL, in a standard summer of five Tests and a one-day series there might be 30 to 40 days of international cricket drawing the fans in. Now there's an extra 35 "high-profile" matches drawing average crowds of 28,000 and more than 1 million television viewers each night.

Once, the washed-out SCG Test, which drew 62,555, would have been the only chance for fans to see live cricket at the peak of the holiday period. This year another 261,575 fans across the state capitals walked through the turnstiles.

"I think cricket is in the consciousness," Sutherland says. "What the Big Bash League has shown again ... at this time of year more cricket is never enough."

CA's research is telling them the three formats are equally popular, which Sutherland calls a good starting point. Ominously for Test cricket, that balance may change with time as the older generation, the traditional form's main audience, passes away.

"We're not saying people have to love all three formats," Sutherland says. "But we do honestly believe that as a starting point the best entree to the game of cricket for young kids is a short, bite-sized piece of entertainment that's easily accessible.

"From our perspective it's bringing new people to the game and graduating that interest."

Still don't understand how Khawaja isn't first picked for all the Aus sides at the moment.