This season will mark the first time that the Melbourne Cricket Ground and the Sydney Cricket Ground will host Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL) contests since the premier T20 tournament shifted to a standalone window in 2019.
According to the schedule released by Cricket Australia for the ninth season, the MCG, SCG, and Adelaide Oval will host the final weekend of the league season, which begins on October 19. This final window will begin on November 24 in Adelaide with a match between Brisbane Heat and Sydney Thunder, followed by a match between Adelaide Strikers and Perth Scorchers. The run-in will then transfer to the iconic MCG the following day (November 25) for the Melbourne Derby before the Sydney Smash on Sunday.
Alistair Dobson, CA’s General Manager of Big Bash Leagues, stated that scheduling WBBL games in top-tier venues was crucial to the evolution of the competition in light of the large attendance at the ongoing Women’s Ashes. “The WBBL will continue to be played in iconic venues like North Sydney Oval and Allan Border Field for the foreseeable future,” Dobson said. “However, the opportunity to host some large events is exciting for us.”
“We will judge the success of those games in different ways… we’ll work hard on driving crowds, but it’s not the only measure of success for us. We’re seeing around the world at the moment that when you put great cricket on in big, famous stadiums, people want to turn up; we’re seeing it in the UK at the moment, we saw it in the WPL.”
The ninth season will feature ten neutral matches, down from last year’s total of twenty-five, and every team will play a home game within the first nine days of the tournament. The season will continue to consist of 59 games (56 league games plus three finals) despite the men’s Big Bash League being reduced to 44 games beginning with this season. The WBBL will run concurrently with the men’s World Cup, but there will be no conflicts with domestic international matches. The championship match will occur on December 2.
