Gerard Whateley
👤 SpeakerVoice Profile Active
This person's voice can be automatically recognized across podcast episodes using AI voice matching.
Appearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
It's funny how sports sort of have the same conversations at the moment.
How does cricket plot the future here in Australia and how does that relate to the BBL whilst we're in the middle of plenty of rancour around the privatisation debates?
The man who's in charge of the BBL and the WBBL is Alistair Dobson and it's great to have Alistair in the studio.
Welcome.
Morning, Gerard.
Great to be here and talking Big Bash in June.
Yes, June.
And so it's not terribly far away.
Do you have any trepidation about staging these seasons against a backdrop of such uncertainty?
Do you think there's a risk that it will strain the goodwill and the affection toward the competition in the way that you've just described?
So are we in a holding pattern for, for these seasons, for the WBBL and the BBL season we're about to go through?
In this town, how do we expect fans to go, having been told that their two teams were folded three weeks ago, and now they're still going to be going around?
This is gymnastics in sport like I've rarely seen.
Hey, your team is not going to exist, but come and watch them again.
In the moments where it was announced the merge and then what was going to happen, you sort of go, so the Renegades are going to hold a list together whilst the Stars become something else having merged.
Is there any capacity or necessity to allow flexibility on the lists of those two clubs heading into this year to go back and forward between them?
What is the likelihood of being able to get the best international talent to this year's BBL?
There's quite clearly tensions last month that got aired around the capacity for Australian-based players to earn versus what international players were able to earn with the $420,000 platinum versus sort of $200,000 to $300,000.
Have you been able to address that at all?
Yeah, so that is a legitimate, grievance is not the right word, but concern that there is far more money available to these players elsewhere than there are under the salary caps and provisions here.