I've read recently about the plans for the Twenty 20 Big Bash competition that will be starting up and to be honest, I'm about as enthused as that famous pig who "Got Up and Slowly Walked Away".
I understand the reasons for what essentially amounts to debranding the six state sides because that leaves the door open to "expand" the competition later, but is anyone truly going to even care that much in the first place?
I can see two fundamental problems with destroying and rebuilding the cricket competition in this way and these are outlined below.
1. The Example of The A-League.
I can see a very long future ahead of the A-League and yet it did do precisely what the Twenty 20 Big Bash proposes to do, however it had to do so because of very different circumstances.
The old National Soccer League was rife with clubs built on ethnic division and exclusiveness. There were Italian, Croatian, Greek, Serbian etc clubs all around the country. The few clubs which did break out this which were the Perth Glory, Northern Spirit and Parrmatta Power etc, but even they could not break the ethnic hold over the competition.
The new A-League might have started with 10 completely unethnically alinged clubs, but it did play on the old state rivalries. It is not by accident that Sydney FC plays in sky blue, or that Melbourne Victory plays in dark blue, Adelaide Utd in red or Queensland Roar in maroon. Perth kept it's purple because that was already an unethnically alinged clubs and fit the new paradigm of the A-League well.
The new Twenty 20 Big Bash does not do this. None of the proposed eight teams play in colours which mean anything to the cities they represent. The Sydney Sixers will play in pink and the Sydney Thunder will play in an electric green strip. Why? Certainly nobody is going to confuse them but the only things in cricket that pink symbolises for me is either the McGrath Foundation or the West Indies World Series Cricket strips of the late 1970s. Electric Green only reminds me of the Canberra Raiders or Kawasaki.
2. Go The "Generic-City Wildcats"!
What is the most famous team in the world across all sports? I bet that if you ask most people outside of the United States, then the answer will more than likely be Manchester United. The name Manchester United has nothing to do with being called a "City Something". They might be called the "Red Devils" as a nickname, but it does not form part of their name and nor does it matter either.
In fact right through Europe, football clubs are named not after their mascots but after the place where they come from. Liverpool, Arsenal, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, are all named after the city they come from. In fact this used to be the way in Australia. Richmond, Essendon, Collingwood, South Sydney, Eastern Suburbs, Parramatta, never used to have a mascot officially in their names.
However when they did start to create mascots and nicknames, the reasons were almost always linked to either the cities they came from or their existing colours.
- Richmond is called the Tigers because they play in yellow and black.
- Essendon are named the bombers because of the former airport in the area.
- Collingwood are the magpies because they play in black and white.
- South Sydney wear red and green because of the colours of the waratah, and a named the Rabbitohs because during hard times, some of the players would sell rabbits as meat in the local area.
- Eastern Suburbs inherited both their "le tricolore" strip and the emblem of the Rooster from the touring French Rugby side of 1906. Easts defected to the new Rugby League in 1908.
- Parramatta gets its emblem from the name of the city itself. The Darug people called the area "Burramatta" which means "the place where the eels lie down".
The point is that neither the names Sydney Thunder nor Sydney Sixers or their pink and green strips respectively have anything to do with the city of Sydney at all. Part of the story of forming a new club unless it is being started by a bunch of friends or associates at a local level, is to reach out and connect with the area you're coming from.
Even the Gold Coast Suns which itself is a stupid name, tried to connect with the beachy sort of culture of the Gold Coast by playing in a red and yellow strip which is synonymous with the safety flags you'll find on most beaches in the country. In that respect the West Sydney Whatever-They-Are which will soon play in the AFL would have best played in black and red as a counter to the Swans white and red, and called themselves the Funnelwebs after Western Sydney's most famous residents. Black and red would have also connected the club to the club's first coach in Kevin Sheedy and thus told a story by itself.
That's really what naming a new sporting team is about. Starting any new sporting team is about starting a new story. Rivalries don't happen instantly but are woven into the fabric of that story over time. What I fear that the Twenty 20 Big Bash has done is by tearing the fabric away from the old stories of almost 120 years of cricket in Australia, it is very difficult to weave a new story afresh and that's bad for cricket.
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