BBL14 Wrap Up

A selection of stats and observations from the season that was.

IMAGE: Getty Images

As part of the countdown to BBL14 I published 50 interesting, unique, or just plain useless stats in the 50 days leading up to the tournament kicking off (you can find all 50 here).

Now that the dust has settled on the BBL14 season, let’s take a look back and see if there are any updates to the stats I found prior to the season.

Contributing equally with the bat and the ball

Tim David’s 0/11 off one over and 11 from 10 balls against the Brisbane Heat was the 47^th occasion a player scored the same number of runs batting as they conceded while bowling. However, this is well short of the effort from former Sri Lankan international Thisara Perera, who scored and conceded 38 runs in a match for the Brisbane Heat against the Melbourne Renegades back in BBL02 – the highest amount of runs in such a situation.

Uncle Dan joins an ultra-exclusive club

Dan Christian made a surprise comeback to the BBL for the Sydney Thunder partway through the season, following injuries to Jason Sangha, Nic Maddinson, Tanveer Sangha, Daniel Sams, and Cameron Bancroft.

The 41-year old Christian, who retired after the BBL12 season, looked like he never left the big stage in his return to the BBL, scoring 23* from 15 (including two sixes) and taking the wicket of the dangerous Nathan McSweeney. The solitary wicket this season was enough to see Christian join Chris Jordan as the only players to take at least one wicket for five different BBL clubs.

The 50- and 100-wicket clubs

At the start of BBL14 there were 37 players who had taken 50 or more wickets in their career, and 10 players who had taken 100 or more wickets. The former club welcomed five new members throughout the season (Xavier Bartlett, Chris Jordan, Hayden Kerr, Tanveer Sangha, and Billy Stanlake), while the latter welcomed four (Riley Merideth, Jhye Richardson, Peter Siddle, and Mark Steketee).

You’ll need more than a broken toe to stop Matt Short

Matt Short played seven games for the Strikers this season, missing three matches with a broken toe. But he still opened both the batting and the bowling in four of the seven matches he featured in – meaning he further extends the record for doing both in the same game. Short has now done this 38 times, well ahead of Chris Gayle and Jaques Kallis, who achieved this feat four times over their respective careers.

The only other player to open both the batting and bowling this season was Michael Neser, who did it for the Brisbane Heat in their second match against the Adelaide Strikers. (In case you were wondering, Short opened the batting but didn’t bowl in that particular match.)

Owen makes it rain (sixes)

Mitch Owen now holds the record for the most sixes hit in a BBL season, after clearing the rope 36 times. This bettered the previous record by – you guessed it, six sixes (Alex Hales hit 30 sixes for the Sydney Thunder in BBL10).

There’s a new most common score in town

150 is now the most common team score in BBL history, having occurred 31 times. This puts it ahead of 147 (28 times), 151/167 (27 times), and 155 (26 times). Three teams scored 150 this season: the Perth Scorchers on December 15, the Melbourne Stars on December 20, and the Melbourne Renegades on January 7.

Maxi gets castled again

Glenn Maxwell was bowled for the 22^nd time in his BBL career on January 12, chopping on to Kane Richardson after blasting 90 runs from 52 balls. Frustrating, yes, but I’ll defer to you whether being dismissed in this fashion is better or worse than this shocking leave.

Note: In the process of writing this piece I learned that Maxi’s infamous leave at the ‘Gabba happened the month after the death of his good mate Phil Hughes. On that particular night, the grief of the loss, which Maxi now admits he hadn’t properly dealt with at the time, caused him to panic, back away, and leave the ball as it removed his middle stump. In the unlikely event that Glenn ever sees this, I wanted to apologise for previously poking fun at a situation where I was not fully aware of what he was dealing with.

Behrendorff continues to strike early

West Australian quick Jason Berendorff had taken the first wicket in a BBL innings on 43 occasions in the previous 13 BBL seasons – the most of any player. The former Perth Scorcher, who signed a new deal with the Melbourne Renegades last week, continued that form in BBL14, taking the first wicket of the innings in four of Perth’s 10 matches: Caleb Jewell on December 21, Jake Fraser-McGurk on December 23, Tom Seifert on January 7, and Josh Philippe on January 11.

Berendorff’s dismissal of Philippe ensured the wicket keeper-batter remained as the biggest bunny in BBL history, as this was the sixth time he had fallen to Berendorff. There are multiple other large rabbits not too far behind, though, namely Sam Billings (dismissed by AJ Tye five times, including once this season), Chris Lynn (Adam Zampa, five times, once this season), Marcus Stoinis (Chris Green, five times, twice this season), and Ashton Turner (Kane Richardson, five times, once this season).

Harper’s duck problem

Alex Hales and Nathan Coulter-Nile would have breathed a sigh of relief when Tom Rodgers trapped Sam Harper leg before for a duck in the second Melbourne derby of the season. The trio had the unwanted record for the most ducks in BBL history ahead of BBL14, with 10 apiece. Harper now sits alone at the top with 11.

Six is still the magic number

Winning by six wickets never seems to go out of vogue in the BBL, with three teams winning by this margin during BBL14 to ensure it remains the most common winning margin in terms of wickets. The most recent occurrence of a team winning by six wickets was the Hurricanes defeating the Thunder in Hobart (during the regular season, not the Final). And while there wasn’t a team that won by six runs this season, it’s still the most common winning margin in terms of runs (16).

Hurricanes leave the Stars as the odd ones out

Coming into BBL14 there were two teams that had not won a championship: the Hobart Hurricanes and the Melbourne Stars. Both teams had made it to the final before – Hobart in BBL03 and BBL07, Melbourne in BBL05, BBL08, and BBL09 – but had failed to get the job done when it mattered.

That all changed this season when the Hurricanes powered to their first BBL title on the back of an incredible season from Mitch Owen (the league’s leading scorer, with 452 runs and two centuries across 11 matches), leaving the Stars as the only franchise not to win a BBL or WBBL title.