This is a message for all you boomers, traditionalists and flanneled hipsters skulking around with a burr in your britches:
Nobody cares that you don’t like the Big Bash.
Yes, we get you prefer the balletic motions of Test cricket over the sensory pollution of T20.
And sure, we accept your belief there’s more nuance and dignity to a 50-over run-chase than the charmless barrages of Tim David.
And of course, we get you’re grumpy because it’s January and the nights are awash with the gauche colour schemes of BBL instead of Australia’s one-day side belting lowly tourists for a crystal decanter.
We acknowledge you have a refined palette. We acknowledge you’re spewin’.
We also acknowledge you’ve racked up more moral wins than Ben Stokes’ England.
But it’s time you woke up and smelt the box cheese.
You may believe BBL is just Mickey Mouse, and that ODI cricket is in a mere pause like it’s the 6pm news bulletin in the innings break of a day-nighter.
But let me tell ya, your game ain’t coming back after Brian Henderson.
That’s because the world is no longer yours and your idealistic visions of cricket are a relic of the past.
Big Bash is the new Benson and Hedges Cup Steve Waugh-taking-a-catch-behind-the-sightscreen memory-making staple of summer, so you might as well surrender and let it envelope you in garish fluoro.
Why?
David Warner addresses the Thunder team. (Photo by Paul Kane/Getty Images)
Because the competition is rating its socks off, pulling in crowds and snaking its tentacles in to the hearts and minds of those with more disposable income and days to live than you – just like ODI cricket did in your younger years.
If you haven’t noticed, T20 is the same disruptive force today as what 50-over cricket was back in the 1980s and ‘90s.
This means those complaining about the BBL – i.e everyone with overwhelming nostalgia and nose hair – are the same people who complained about people who complained about ODI cricket.
In modern speak, it means if you’re getting OK Boomer’d today then you probably OK Boomer’d someone in 1987 for defending blokes scoring at 2.01 RPO on Channel Two.
See where this is going?
Just like dad was affronted by Dean Jones’ sunnies and grandad thought covered wickets were woke madness, we’re all on cricket’s cultural conveyor belt waiting to become the thing we once mocked.
And to those scoffing at the BBL today, remember how it ended when YOU championed a shorter form of the game in the face of establishmentarianism?
Against centuries of moth-balled resistance, your patronage helped ODI cricket become a staple that gifted us decades of 50-over matches full of meaning.
Better yet, all were tastefully scheduled amid various bilateral test series competed by players we could actually name – all thanks to battlers like you and Kerry Packer.
But now all good things must come to an end.
The changing face of Australia – and its wallet – has meant the game no longer caters for 50-over cricket, nor us consumers who don’t mind our games on the wireless and our run-chases via cultured nurdling.
Hence why the post-Test series window once jammed with canary yellow has been replaced with the weightless tickling of the BBL – and you arch-conservatives need to cop it sweet.
Sure, there was a time when sneering at T20 cricket offered immense street cred – and as a trousered Gen X grouch, I can speak from experience.
Glenn Maxwell bats during the BBL match between Melbourne Stars and Melbourne Renegades. (Photo by Josh Chadwick – CA/Cricket Australia via Getty Images)
Even though fans of all persuasions have always loved aggressive batting – provided it’s not Bazball – I was also once a traditionalist who maintained T20 was as uncouth as a spinner opening the bowling.
Along with my other high-waisted friends, we’d sancti-moan about power surges, bucket hats and fun, all while preaching how Peter Taylor would’ve been ‘too good’ to be a spinner in T20 because he didn’t bowl 95km darts, when in fact he *wouldn’t* have been good enough because he *didn’t* bowl 95km darts.
Then when administrators made the BBL so long that certain versions of the competition are reportedly still running, we claimed victory.
It seemed the format was finally being exposed as the capitalist butter machine it was, and we cheered believing it was about to perish in a flurry of grade bowlers banging in slower ball bouncers on featherbed pitches to four men on the leg side boundary in front of 11,000 school kids, 8,000 who were in the Gades Arcade.
But nowadays, the kink shaming of bat flips and magenta mercenaries makes the old-schoolers look as outdated as a Gray-Nicolls scoop and twice as fragile.
Don’t believe me?
In summary, T20 cricket is the format of now and the BBL is creating memories for Australia’s Gen Z to match our Michael Bevan New Year’s Day.
There’s a reason Glenn Maxwell is the most famous cricketer of his generation, and that’s because he hit 90 off 51 balls in a flat-brim snapback.
When was the last time someone did that in Test cricket?
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