WBBL 2019 | Mel Jones suggests proper window to ensure full-time overseas participation
Cricket Australia's board member Mel Jones has asked all the members to work together to form a proper window for WBBL where overseas players will be available full time. Some teams in the WBBL will lose some of their crucial overseas players before the playoffs due to national commitments.
Former Australian cricketer and Cricket Australia's board member Mel Jones 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. WBBL Season five has gone a step further this time by becoming a standalone competition ending just before the beginning of the men's Big Bash League and it will be a body blow for teams like Perth Scorchers and Melbourne Renegades as they will lose some of their crucial players if they qualify for the playoffs due to national commitments. In order to maintain its strong status as a standalone Women's T20 League, Jones believes that it is necessary for star players from all over the world to be available for playing the entire WBBL.
"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 dearly miss the services of stars like Nat Sciver and Amy Jones while the Renegades will be without Danielle Wyatt and Tammy Beaumont if they make it to the playoffs. Moreover, star Indian players like Smriti Mandhana and Harmanpreet Kaur did not feature in the current season of the WBBL and Windies skipper Stefanie Taylor could only play two games before she headed to the Carribean for a home 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."
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