Big Bash League takes its season opener to Chennai, with monsoon season not yet over

Alistair Dobson has taken the Big Bash League’s season opener outside Australia for the first time, sending Melbourne Renegades and Perth Scorchers to Chennai for a 12 December match. Dobson, the league’s head, has presented the move as part of the BBL’s shift from an Australian competition towards a global one.

The game will be played at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, known as Chepauk, in a city that receives considerable rainfall between October and December. Mid-December comes near the end of Chennai’s monsoon season, and wet weather alerts have already been issued for different parts of the city.

The match is due to begin at 2:40 PM IST. The afternoon start leaves more daylight available if weather stops play, though neither a reserve day nor the precise details of any extended playing-time rules have been set out.

Dobson called the weather “a manageable risk right now”. He said organisers had taken lots of advice from locals and were optimistic about conditions, while accepting that “clearly you can't predict the weather”.

The league is working through playing conditions that could extend the time available beyond that of normal BBL matches. Dobson said the 2:40 PM IST start “does give us the scope to add some more length to the playing time if needed”.

There will be no reserve day. Dobson said the BBL lacked room for one “given the nature of the BBL”, comparing its schedule with the Indian Premier League: “A bit like the IPL, where the show rolls on pretty quickly to the next stop”.

“We're really committed to getting a game played,” Dobson said.

The pressure is immediate for a fixture that has already sold 5,000 tickets. Dobson said it was the “highest-selling game of the season at the moment”.

For Dobson, the Chennai match is also a test of the BBL’s wider ambitions. “the days of the BBL just being an Australian league where we exist and grow in our own backyard are over and the BBL is and continues to grow as a global league that has fans and impact around the world”, he said.

He said the BBL was “in the top couple of leagues globally” and added: “We know the BBL is already really popular in India”.

Dobson also said he would be “open to, in the future, the possibility of bringing a WBBL game to different parts of the world”.