announced the schedule for the 12th edition of the Women\u2019s Big Bash League<\/a>, with both Melbourne clubs set to play on the competition\u2019s opening day at Junction Oval.<\/p>\nAsked about the challenges of curating a schedule for teams with an uncertain future, CA\u2019s Big Bash general manager Alistair Dobson said the organisation\u2019s attention was focused solely on the season ahead.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing\u2019s certain. Nothing\u2019s decided or definitive in terms of the future of those clubs or any of our clubs,\u201d Dobson told reporters on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of work is going on to establish the best model and set-up for the Big Bash going forward. That\u2019s been clearly a topic of lots of discussion, but our eyes are firmly focused on this season with those two clubs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s been some different considerations this year and different type of work going on with those clubs, but as we get into the start of the WBBL, our optimism around those clubs is high.\u201d<\/p>\n
BBL privatisation one step closer | 00:31<\/p>\n
The Stars and Renegades are scheduled to face each other at Junction Oval on November 22 and November 28, with the Melbourne Mace up for grabs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe race for the Melbourne Mace will be alive again this year,\u201d Dobson continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Mace will be played for four times across the WBBL and BBL, and we\u2019re really excited about how that came to life last season.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we know particularly on the WBBL side, those two teams can\u2019t wait to play each other for the Mace, so there\u2019s lots of really exciting things happening in Melbourne,<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re really optimistic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dobson also confirmed the Renegades\u2019 WBBL side would operate on a caretaker basis this season alongside the men\u2019s team.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been working with Cricket Vic to establish a more independent operations for that club overall for this coming year and on the basis that there\u2019s a scenario where the licence for that club might change hands at some point in the future, albeit nothing\u2019s set in stone,\u201d Dobson explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe independence of that club is across both their teams. We don\u2019t separate BBL and WBBL teams in the operations across any of our clubs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Melbourne BBL teams set to merge | 03:52<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, Dobson was non-committal on the future of the overseas player draft, stopping short of guaranteeing it would return this year amid speculation the Big Bash will shift towards an auction model. However, he clarified that CA had not yet landed on a final model for contracting overseas talent.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all know that the nature of the player market is pretty dynamic and shifting, and overseas players coming into the WBBL has been such an important part of it,\u201d Dobson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re working through that at the moment in terms of what the contracting model does look like for this season. Obviously there\u2019s lots of movement in different parts of the sport, and the player market is one of those.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t landed on a final model yet. We\u2019re working through that with the ACA and with our clubs. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe way our overseas players are contracted into the WBBL is a really important part of that, so hopefully some announcements in the next couple of weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 12th edition of the WBBL commences on Thursday, October 29.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cricket Australia\u2019s Big Bash boss has reiterated that \u201cnothing\u2019s certain\u201d about the Melbourne Renegades\u2019 future as the club…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":773992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-773991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=773991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/773992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=773991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=773991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=773991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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