Home – Queensland Cricket

NEW FIXTURE CAN ATTRACT
BIG CRICKET ATTENDANCES
Edition 30, July 2008
CONTENTS
2 ‘Leading the Charge’ –
with Graham Dixon
4 Interstate Fixtures
6 Suncorp Challenge/Tour
7 Barsby’s Positive Action
9 Harris Right At Home
11 Reardon Inspired
13 New-Look Bulls
14 Hayden is Just Great
15 Bulls Bring Rain, Dollars
16 Back To School
17 The Burge Medallist
18 Purves Craves Success
20 Test Re-Cap
“Between the Wickets” is
the official E-Newsletter of
Queensland Cricket
Editors: Ron McDonald,
Stephen Gray, Peter Blucher
Queensland Cricket
1 Bogan St
Breakfast Creek, Q, 4010
Ph: (07) 3292 3100
Email: qldc@qldcricket.com.au
QC website: qldcricket.com.au
The new interstate fixture
for 2008-09 gives the hope
of big crowds for the XXXX
GOLD Bulls home KFC
Twenty20 Big Bash
matches, and at the same
time allows us to still take
the team out into the regions
again.
Playing our first KFC Twenty20
Big Bash home match
against NSW on Boxing Day
might seem radical to some,
but history suggests otherwise.
For three or four years after
the light towers were
erected at the Gabba,
Cricket Australia had the
Bulls play a practice style
match against the third
team coming into Australia
for the Tri-Series ODI fixtures
on Boxing Night.
We were pleasantly surprised
by the fact that people
seemed to want to go
somewhere at that time of
the year, and were getting
crowds of 17,000-18,000 to
those matches. That opportunity
faded away with the
preference of international
teams to jet into a country
and get straight into the serious
stuff.
In our thinking to maximize
our crowds, and trying to
take into account what our
supporters would want, we
remembered those days and
believed it was worth a try.
The Boxing Day experiment,
coupled with a Friday night
match almost two weeks
later, are reasonable times
to attract a crowd over the
holiday period. We’ve also
got the international Twenty20
against South Africa at
the Gabba not long after the
interstate Twenty20 series
finishes, so it will be an exciting
time for the growing
legion of fans of the shortened
version of the game.
Due to the fact that we
have received just the two
home games instead of
three like last season, it did
not make commercial sense
to take one of the games to
the country when we could
reasonably expect in the vicinity
of 20,000 to attend
each game with an ounce of
luck.
The good news for our organization
was that Fox-
Sports did not earmark the
October 18 Ford Ranger Cup
opener against Tasmania for
telecast, which gave us the
opportunity to take the high
profile one day match to a
regional centre.
We elected to take the
game to Cairns because the
game’s supporters up there
missed out on an Australia-
Bangladesh Test and oneday
game. When the Test
series fell over, CA opted to
keep the one-day series in
the one venue (Darwin) for
economical reasons, which
is understandable.
Given that Cairns had been
expecting a Test match, we
thought the least we could
do was offer a meaningful
Ford Ranger Cup game,
which we hope will be well
supported.
It was subsequent to our request
to CA that Cairns receive
the October fixture
that New Zealand Cricket
High Performance Manager
John Wright nominated
Cairns as the venue for the
Kiwis’ three-day and Twenty20
games against Queensland
next month.
John toured the north to
find an appropriate venue
and we hope it is a successful
venture, enough to encourage
the New Zealanders
to come back next year,
where we will request they
take a long look at Townsville
or Mackay.
By spending a week in
Cairns for these winter
matches, it gives the game
development people and
State players the chance to
promote cricket heavily
throughout the region.
There will be 3-4 players
not playing at various
times, so our regional
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