Former Australian cricketer and Cricket Australia’s board member Mel Jones has come forward with an idea which will prove economical in the upcoming WBBL seasons.
Many overseas players eventually opt out of WBBL due to national duties and that becomes baggage for the respective franchises to get a replacement of equal potential going forward which is clearly a disadvantage that can be avoided if planning is done correctly. She has proposed to decide a window in the calendar of Women’s Cricket dedicated exclusively to the WBBL so that the overseas players will be available for the entire duration of the tournament. This season of WBBL is standalone on the Air which is till now has proved to be a fruitful gamble, it is getting a decent and more than expected viewership. Going forward, it will be a wise step if there’s a full calendar of each participating played fully dominated to WBBL to avoid any interruptions.
“You create heroes and a game plan and all of these things with a certain set of players, and then you lose them for finals, that’s pretty tough. At the end of the day it’s down to the boards to plan ahead and make sure they’re supporting their players to earn more money and develop their games,” Jones told cricket.com.au.
The Scorchers will miss out on their important players like Nat Sciver and Amy Jones while the Renegades will be replacing Danielle Wyatt and Tammy Beaumont if they make it to the playoffs. Adding to that, this year star Indian players like Smriti Mandhana and Harmanpreet Kaur did not feature in the current season of the WBBL and Windies skipper Stefanie Taylor was only available for two games as she headed home for series against India.
Pakistan vs England series was announced in November while India vs West Indies series was announced in September and thus it then becomes very difficult to manage a proper slot for the WBBL on such short notice. “We need to find a way for the national bodies to work together and plan the international calendar out in advance a little bit more, so players know where they’re going to be 24 months in advance. I think (at the moment) some of the other nations probably aren’t thinking outside of getting their national teams playing more, so then they don’t think about what else could be impacted (by their scheduling),” Jones said.
“Hopefully this can be an awareness campaign to say this is where world cricket is at, and we’d love to have players from Bangladesh and Pakistan play more and more in WBBL, but for that to happen we need to clear these windows.”
Source: Sports Cafe
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