Sydney Sixers head coach Greg Shipperd has taken aim at the Big Bash League’s finals timetable after his side fell to Perth Scorchers in Sunday’s decider. The Sixers were bundled out for 132 and watched the hosts cruise home by six wickets with 15 balls spare in front of 55,000 at Optus Stadium. Perth’s victory delivered a record-extending sixth title; Sydney, though, left the ground feeling the schedule had beaten them before the first ball.
The numbers are stark. In eight days the Sixers flew Sydney-Brisbane-Perth-Sydney-Perth. The crunch came in the finals window: loss to the Scorchers in Perth on Tuesday, red-eye back east to beat Hobart Hurricanes in Friday’s Challenger, straight back across the continent on Saturday, then the grand final less than 24 hours later.
“It wasn’t ideal,” Shipperd admitted. “Some of the scheduling was not what we were looking for. You don’t get a chance to train the day before the game, which I would have thought not many other sports are letting that happen at this elite level.”
Captain Moises Henriques, worried about fatigue, skipped a pre-match media call with Ashton Turner on Saturday afternoon. Small thing, maybe, but telling. Players usually jump at those slots; this time, sleep and stretching won the argument.
Shipperd said the club had already raised concerns earlier in the season. “We’ll feed some feedback back to headquarters. I think we were the only team that provided feedback to Cricket Australia [earlier this season]. So I don’t know whether other teams are lazy in that respect or we were thinking that we were going to be playing finals, and so we were worrying about that sort of thing.”
One obvious fix, the coach felt, would have been shifting the final to Monday’s Australia Day public holiday. “If it was a holiday, yes, we could have played on Monday and given our team that sort of break to freshen up going into the game,” he said. “But that’s not a major excuse for us in the context of the season.”
Rain added another irritant. A shower swept through during the Scorchers’ chase; the umpires kept the players out. “We thought that there was an opportunity to come off,” Shipperd said. “The umpires, I think, may have set a benchmark down in Hobart [in the knockout match on Wednesday] where they played through blinding rain. They probably played that same card tonight, when there may have been a possibility to come off and just reset, let the ground settle down in terms of the wetness of the ball.”
On television Steven Smith, watching his old side, was blunter: “There’s no way we should be playing cricket in this. I’ve never played when it’s been raining this hard. It’s pouring.”
Cricket Australia points to venue availability, broadcast slots and the desire to reward higher-placed teams with home fixtures as reasons for the compressed play-off ladder. Privately, some officials argue that franchises agree to the template at the season’s start. The players’ union is expected to canvas feedback before next summer.
For now the Sixers head home empty-handed, body clocks scrambled, still proud of reaching yet another final. The Scorchers will scarcely care; trophies soothe sore hamstrings. But the wider question remains: can the league keep forcing sides across a continent and still expect the best cricket?
