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The key reason why the BBL has turned the corner at long last

Mitch Owen walked off Ninja Stadium on Monday night having achieved what every sports-loving child could only dream of doing.

Once a young face in the crowd who sat on the hill at Bellerive Oval with his parents dreaming that one day he would be walking out to the middle with his name on the back of a Hobart Hurricanes shirt, the biggest breakout star of BBL14 strode off the ground as the player of the match and a maiden championship winner for the team he grew up watching.

It’s a perfect story that encapsulates what the BBL has become.

A competition once enamored with attracting the biggest names and stars got too big for its own boots and lost its way when it tried to overcook the golden goose.

Now, 14 years later, it has a generation of players who have grown up dreaming of playing for their BBL clubs and are now the men – and women – in the arena making the magic happen.

When Cricket Australia decided to expand the tournament with more games, and extend it beyond the school holidays, the Australian public went the other way.

The crown jewel of the summer, destined to become CA’s money-spinner and rival to Test cricket’s long-held status as the sport’s centerpiece in Australia, had become a mere afterthought. Not through a lack of trying by the powers that be, it became a competition that lost its soul.

Ratings and crowds plummeted and as the riches of T20 cricket grew, the top imports stopped coming and the Test superstars thought twice about joining up to play after their international commitments were done.

Thus came the questions as the competition came to its crossroads. What should the BBL be?

HOBART, AUSTRALIA - JANUARY 27: Mitch Owen of the Hurricanes celebrates scoring a century during the BBL The Final match between Hobart Hurricanes and Sydney Thunder at Ninja Stadium on January 27, 2025 in Hobart, Australia. (Photo by Steve Bell/Getty Images)

Mitch Owen celebrates scoring a century. (Photo by Steve Bell/Getty Images)

Was this an elite, professional competition in which high performance is prioritized, the road to building a strong Australian T20 side in the same vein that the Sheffield Shield is meant to prepare Test cricketers? Or was it purely for entertainment, a gateway to lure youngsters into playing the game?

From hitting the low point during the COVID-19 pandemic, where displaced teams would play at neutral venues in non-optimal timeslots for attracting fans and eyeballs amid a struggle to lure imports to Australia due to harsh quarantine rules, it would appear that the Big Bash is starting to find some of its magic again.

This season alone saw a six-year high for crowds and a five-year high for television ratings, with the decider on Sunday being the highest rating final on Seven since they assumed the broadcast rights.

1.083m watched the final on the network, including 76,000 on 7Plus. This was up 38 per cent on the 2024-25 decider.

And it hasn’t been built off big names from overseas coming out for a cameo appearance, but off local quality and competitive cricket.

Close games, big moments, and extraordinary feats with the bat, ball, and in the field have drawn the public back to its domestic competition. While undoubtedly the appearances and the inclusions of the Test stars have helped draw the crowds, the lure of the stars has turned into an ‘ad value’ rather than a necessity.

It’s been the emergence of local superstars that have brought the league back to life.

The heroics of a teenage Cooper Connolly getting his Perth Scorchers over the line in front of a packed Optus Stadium crowd to seal the trophy in 2022/23. The sustained excellence of Matt Short, who elevated himself from Shield and middle order regular to opening the batting for Australia in both forms of white-ball cricket.

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The list goes on. Spencer Johnson, Jake Fraser-McGurk, Xavier Bartlett and Nathan Ellis have all rode the BBL train to the national team. Sam Konstas’ swashbuckling BBL debut this season helped land him his spot in the Australian Test XI and started him on the road to superstardom.

All have built their way to the Australian team and beyond by using the BBL as a key driver in their careers. Good judges will tell you that some of the teenagers who debuted throughout this season are destined for big things in Australian cricket too.

And now Owen has added his name to a growing list of budding stars who have gone from the BBL to the world.

The BBL isn’t perfect and will always have its quirks and issues that will continue to hold it back in the medium term.

But after years of being stuck in the wilderness and merely existing, it has come out the other side and starting to find its place again.

Owen’s magnificent display on Monday night will go down as the best Big Bash innings ever played – but even better than that, the story told of the once young face in the crowd having that same crowd chanting his name is proof that the league has found its place at last.


>Cricket News

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