Big Bash 1 National interests 0

I like large pink Hummers. I like two Melbourne teams. I like Shane Warne. And Bryce McGain. And even Stuart MacGill. Plus, I like Twenty20 cricket. I do. Maybe I don’t love it, but I like the T20 game itself more than I have ever liked 50-over cricket. I prefer Test cricket, just because I think it’s a better form of the game, but T20 cricket still does something for me. I don’t just like the big hits and bad commentary; I like the tactics, the new deliveries, the way spinners and left-arm quicks seem to do so well, and how my favourite ignored first-class cricketers can now get some of the adulation they deserve instead of slaving away in front of 12 people in an empty colosseum. I even enjoy going to the toilet when the strategic time-out is used.

But if you strip the tonnes of cosmetics off the Big Bash league, it’s just another T20 league. I can’t get excited about another new tournament. I have nothing against the Big Bash itself; I don’t get excited for the IPL, Champions League T20, Friends Life t20, Stanbic Bank 20 Series or even the Insinger de Beaufort Twenty20 Cup. With a Test series I know that chances are I won’t see these two teams play again in a while. T20 tournaments come around yearly, like Neil Harvey quotes, and it’s nice to know they exist so your television is never far away from a cricket match, but that’s all. I usually can’t remember who won the tournament that came before the current tournament, which is all right because by the time I remember that I’ve forgotten the last tournament there is a new tournament to watch. I mean, before T20 I hardly used the word tournament.

What I don’t like is when the Big Bash, or any T20 league, changes the way cricket is run. Shield Cricket, for all its flaws, is a nursery for national honours: the dependable big brother who always does the responsible thing. The Big Bash is like the youngest child, who pours red cordial on the walls while singing out of tune Lady Gaga songs and still gets special treatment. It already has its own season, extra international players, and more money than the rest of domestic cricket, but now also gets preference over quality preparation the Test team.

Everyone who has seen the schedule will think it odd, criminal or just properly insane that during Australia’s Test series against India no first-class cricket is being played, in order for the Big Bash to have the domestic season to its self. Six months ago India were the best Test team in the world, and Australia have lost, won, drawn and drawn in their last four series. Having their back-up players involved in a different format altogether is hardly going to help.

This, of course, is old news. The new news is all about the hirsute ESPNcricinfo star columnist Ed Cowan. With Australia’s top order beset by injuries, bad techniques and poor form, Eddie Cowan’s three recent first-class hundreds could put him, perhaps, one more knock away from getting his chance in the Australia top three. The chance to get that knock should be on December 15 and 16 against the touring Indians in a Chairman’s XI match he was named captain for.

But no, Eddie can’t play in that match.

Right as it stands it doesn’t matter if he wants to play in that match, make a hundred against India, and push his case for Boxing day, or New Year’s Day, or any of the Tests that follow; he can’t.

The reason? His Big Bash team the Sydney Sixers are also beset by injury, and they need Eddie to play for them in their first Big Bash spectacular. This is the same Sydney Sixers who presumably got Eddie because he is fun in the dressing-room rather than for his T20 average of 12.57.

Maybe I’m naïve, but I figured that in a fight between the chairman of selectors and a cricket franchise, Cricket Australia might let the national team’s interests be seen to first. That doesn’t look like the situation at all. There are two Chairman’s XI matches, but the second also clashes with a Sydney Sixers match. So even if Eddie were moved to this match, the overall score would still be National Interests 1 – Franchise Cricket 1.

When the IPL, real or imagined, impinges on any aspect of Australian cricket, every second newspaper and bar has someone pointing out the link. Yet right now when the Big Bash may be affecting the Test team, no one seems all that concerned. According to the Carter Crawford report that Cricket Australia paid for, “the long-term risk is that Australian cricket could gradually become a feeder league that provides players to lucrative competitions being played elsewhere.” Perhaps that could be a short-term risk, and some of those lucrative competitions won’t be elsewhere, but right in their backyard.

Before John Inverarity took over his job as chairman of selectors, these tour matches (the only real red-ball cricket leading up to the Test series against India) were deemed so unimportant that India was going to play against players who weren’t contracted with Big Bash teams. They were essentially going to be warming up against club cricketers. Now India don’t take warm-up matches seriously, so they may not have cared much about who the opposition was. But for Australian cricket, these matches are important.

Australia’s red-ball long-format cricket is switched off now for what I am sure the folk singer Paul Kelly would refer to as the circus coming to town. So these were always important, even before John Inverarity turned them into a Boxing Day Audition for a failing batting line-up.

As it stands, Eddie Cowan may never get that audition. Instead he’s contractually obliged to say ‘hell no’ to his potential Test career if his franchise needs him. Maybe one day young Aussie players will dream of playing for the Sixers instead of the Baggy Green, but I doubt that Eddie Cowan feels that way. Perhaps they can make him feel better by driving him to the ground in one of those large pink Hummers they are so fond of.