The Daily Telegraph has musings from Cricket Australia about expanding the woefully named Big Bash League to include a Canberra team next year.
THE Gold Coast, Canberra, Newcastle and Geelong are all in the running to have a Big Bash team as soon as next summer as the reinvigorated Twenty20 competition continues to explode.
With ratings and crowds surging ahead of expectations, Cricket Australia has already began looking at further expansion years ahead of its original timetable.
The long dream of being able to trek down to Manuka Oval after work for a top notch T-20 match finally draws closer.
[Photo courtesy Cricket Australia.]
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great entertainment , bring it home homies 😛 Waiting for this to happen 🙂
Thumper said :
That was it – for some reason I remember Len Pascoe being involved. Thanks.
sb14 said :
If it was too small when the Tooheys Country Challenge was played there some 30 years ago, then it will be way too small now after Teflon Kate had her way with it.
It’s a union/league/football venue only.
It’s just not cricket if it’s played on a rectangular field.
gertel said :
Pub for me at 1.30.
Woohoo, three nil coming up!
Good to see Rhino back in the side.
Just build the new stadium
wildturkeycanoe said :
Not to mention the cost of transporting a whole family by bus! 😛
I have a vague recollection of attending a cricket game at Canberra stadium in either the late 70s or early 80s. I think it was a one dayer with a touring international team – but i was very young
Indeed.
it was called the Tooheys Country Challenge, or something similiar and was a bunch of ex test cricketers and first class cricketers playing some sort of limited overs game.
Bruce Stadium was way too small. Every mishit ended up as six.
I was only a little tacker but I would say it was early 80s.
sb14 said :
I have a vague recollection of attending a cricket game at Canberra stadium in either the late 70s or early 80s. I think it was a one dayer with a touring international team – but i was very young
In trying to find out what that game was, I came across the interesting fact that the current 400m world record for women was set at Bruce (as it then was) Stadium (1985 Marita Koch) and the current 4x100m world record for women was set at the same event (East Germany). Obviously the asterix for ‘probable drug use’ applies. Still, how many other athletic/major sports records have been set in Canberra, let alone lasted for almost 30 years.
Deckard said :
+1 for Canberra Stadium. It would be a fantastic venue for T20
I think if they could get lights at Manuka I’d be a season-ticket holder. Even at Canberra Stadium I’d go fairly often.
I’m OK with the name “Big Bash”, otherwise it’d be called “Having a Bat” or “Whacking Off” or some other double-entendre (And the mathematically-correct “Increased Randomness” just doesn’t roll-off the tongue so smoothly).
I fully support Cricket keeping-up with people’s shortening attention-spans (Test-matches are the TL:DR sport!).
Great idea but what is all this Manuka Oval garbage? Canberra stadium is ready for it, as it is played in the evenings. Also, how do you get all the spectators to and from the game, considering the miserable public transport system we have and lack of parking around the ground? Each bus carries 45-50 people and there are only two [2] services after 9:48 PM going to City or Woden. So, 100 people get out of the ground and the other 12,550 have to get a taxi or walk.
Cricket Australia needs to consider this before even thinking about bringing a national sport to a small country town like Canberra!
poetix said :
Not to mention the blood-pumping thrill of playing-out for a draw.
Primal said :
Yes, we’ll have to apply the <blink> tag!
I expect subsequent teams will have to combine multiple bright colours – I vote for the SLC/Maccas/DHL classic of red/yelow.
poetix said :
That’s called a Test – and another one begins tomorrow! W00t!
Where’s the elegance? Or the long drawn out battles between bowler and batsman? Sigh.
Heavs said :
Wouldn’t they play at Canberra Stadium? The short boundaries would suit the format.
Primal said :
Surely we could stake a claim to take back the lime green from whichever sydney team has it (I cant believe that after all the complaints about how hard it is to figure out where the super 15 rugby teams come from that they still decided to promote the team name rather than team location)
anyway, lime green is our colour. i remember lime green milk and breach in 1989.
Pfft. That’s not real cricket.
Gee, more pictures on TV of sportsmen at Manuka Oval with rows of completely empty seats behind them.