At a time when Cricket Australia and New Zealand Cricket explore a possible Kiwi entry into the Big Bash League, both countries’ captains have expressed their interest in potential transtasman unification.
As first reported by Code Sports, NZ Cricket officials will commission an independent assessment as to the viability of at least one franchise in Australia’s franchise Twenty20 competition, with potential expansion as early as 2028.
Speaking to Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking, NZC chief executive Scott Weenink outlined that the national body had been in talks with Cricket Australia for the past 12 months, around men’s and women’s franchises.
Should the move prove viable, NZC would need to convince its major associations – Auckland, Northern Districts, Wellington, Central Districts, Canterbury and Otago – to get behind the venture.
Along the same lines, Cricket Australia would have to ensure its stakeholders are also on board, with the likes of Canberra and even Singapore also mooted as potential destinations.
But, as the two nations prepare to meet in three T20 internationals for the Chappell-Hadlee Trophy, acting Black Caps captain Michael Bracewell said that the moving state of the sport does make a New Zealand Big Bash entity something he’d be interested in.
“I think it’s an exciting opportunity,” said Bracewell. “It looks like a great competition from afar.
“It’s not something that’s just been thrown around. The idea of a New Zealand team being brought into the Big Bash has been around for a while. We’ll see where it goes.
“It’s an ever-changing landscape, the franchise world. We’ll see what happens.”
Despite the clash of timing with the New Zealand summer, the Black Caps have found themselves as valuable commodities for Big Bash teams to snap up.
Tim Seifert, Lockie Ferguson, Finn Allen and Adam Milne have all taken up contracts after opting out of NZ Cricket central deals, while Colin de Grandhomme famously retired from internationals altogether to join the Adelaide Strikers in 2022.
And while each Big Bash team is allowed to field a maximum of three international players per game, having a New Zealand team – theoretically consisting of more than that – would alter the competition’s make-up in more than one way.
Australian T20 captain Mitchell Marsh, though, says that while he personally would be on board with a New Zealand entry, he’s happy to let the powers at be make any decisions around the competition’s future.
“I think there’s a lot of conversations around the Big Bash at the moment,” said Marsh. “The guys at the top will make those decisions in the future.
“I certainly wouldn’t be opposed to it.”
Regardless of whether the Big Bash expands into New Zealand or not, the move raises questions about Aotearoa’s approach to the shortest format.
At present, New Zealand is the only major cricketing nation without a franchise model T20 tournament.
As most countries around the world use domestic T20 as a money-making opportunity, NZ Cricket instead is content with using the Super Smash to develop players to step up into the Black Caps.
And even if the competition operates at a financial loss, the success of New Zealand internationally, for the most part, shows that stance to be well-placed.
The risk in having a New Zealand entry in the Big Bash, though, would be that it undercuts the Super Smash, which would lose players to the new venture, in the fight for viewership.
However, as Weenink explains, the time has clearly arrived for NZ Cricket to rethink T20 cricket, with private equity being introduced into the Super Smash also on the table.
“This is not mutually exclusive from the privitasation of Super Smash,” Weenink told Newstalk ZB. “It would be mutually exclusive if we were to do anything else, such as another form of privitasation.
“The Super Smash would certainly continue in some form, if we were to put teams in the Big Bash.
“It’s important to have a very strong domestic competition in New Zealand as well.”
Alex Powell is a sports journalist for the NZ Herald. He has been a sports journalist since 2016.