Scarcity of young batsmen in BBL a growing concern for Australian cricket

When the first season of the Big Bash League (BBL) was launched back in 2011, with a grand total of 31 matches featuring the best players across the country in action, it was launched with an attempt to structurize T20 cricket in the country. While the ultimate aim - that of making Australia lift a WT20 title - is yet to be achieved, over the course of the last 8 years, the popularity of the tournament has increased ten folds and the league itself has become gargantuan.

When it comes to batting, however, the situation is gloomy and truth be spoken, the future looks bleak. You look around the roster across all the teams and there are barely a handful of batsmen who have either shown the potential to make it big or have already made inroads in the competition.

‘Where are the youngsters?’ you may ask. That is a question for which no one, not even the franchises, seems to have an answer for. Of the Top 12 highest run-getters in this tournament, Sydney Sixers’ Josh Philippe is the ONLY player sub-25 years of age; a revealing yet alarming statistic, which is a major cause for concern. But what is perhaps more disconcerting is the fact that this has been a problem that has been brewing over the course of the last three years, not just attributed to this particular season, and has been conveniently ignored and overlooked.  

Since 2016, there have only been three out-and-out BBL prospects (batsmen) under the age of 25 who have gone on to make it to the Australian team - Travis Head, Ashton Turner and Ben McDermott. Of course, age can never be the only criterion to judge players, but it does tend to give you a fair idea of how many youngsters are coming through the ranks and knocking at the door and as of this moment, it’s none. The petrifying realisation is that the ones who have actually succeeded and broken through - Chris Lynn, D’Arcy Short, Ben Dunk et al - have all failed to cut it at the international level, which does raise a question or two about the standards of the competition.

And as has always been the case with the second tier of youngsters - Jordan Silk, Beau Webster, Matthew Short and Sam Heazlett - one great knock seems to be, more often than not, overshadowed by a string of poor performances, leading to the ‘one step forward, two steps backward’ loop over and over again. The bitter truth is that not one young player has taken the tournament by the scruff of its neck. In fact, you probably would have to go all the way back to 2015 where a then 22-year-old Travis Head took the tournament by storm and ironically, he, too, ended up having a substandard T20I career. 

How and why it has come to this point is a question that the management needs to ask themselves. By no means is there a scarcity of talent - from Bryce Street to Daniel Solway to Jake Fraser-McGurk to Jack Edwards, many a young batsman has set the stage ablaze in both the Sheffield Shield and the Marsh Cup, two tournaments where there’s less emphasis on results, and batsmen, young batsmen in specific, are given more space and freedom to express themselves. 

Sure, the BBL is an elite T20 competition which is right up there with the best in the world, but while the likes of IPL, Vitality Blast and even the PSL have been churning out an incalculable amount of talented young cricketers to their respective countries, the current state of affairs doesn’t reflect well on the league, for it has not been serving its primary purpose of producing players for the country. Australia are blessed to have a superabundance of T20 giants in their ranks, but the line they’re treading in is a thin one. It’s probs time for them to give the league a ‘propah shake’.