The Big Bash League (also recognised as the KFC Big Bash League for sponsorship reasons, and commonly abbreviated to BBL or Big Bash) is an Australian professional club Twenty20 cricket league established by Cricket Australia in 2011. The Big Bash League replaced the old rivalries, the KFC Twenty20 Big Bash, and features 8 city-based franchises instead of the past six state teams. Since its beginnings, the competition has been supported by the fast-food chicken chain KFC. It is one of two T20 cricket leagues, along with the Indian Premier League, to rank among 10 leading domestic sports leagues in terms of the average participation.
Out of the eight teams in the Big Bash, the Perth Scorchers have the most dominant record. They’ve won the championship three times, two of them in a sequence. The Scorchers won the BBL three times: in 2013-14, 2014-15, and 2016-17. The Scorchers won their first BBL championship in 2013-14, trouncing the Hobart Hurricanes in the final. The Scorchers finished third in the league table with 5 wins and 3 setbacks from eight games.
They defeated the Sydney Sixers by five runs (D/L) in a rain-shortened semi-final. For the Scorchers, Craig Simmons batted first and scored 112 off 58 balls. Shaun Marsh’s undefeated 63 from 43 balls in the final against the Hurricanes in Perth resulted in a total of 191 runs for four wickets. The team had won their first BBL title with kudos to the exceptional statistics of left-arm spin bowler Brad Hogg (2 for 17). Simon Katich had a strike rate of 130.83 while scoring 314 runs in 10 games for the Scorchers in 2013-14. Yasir Arafat, a pacer, led the franchise in wickets with 12 in six games at a strike rate of 12.
The Scorchers fought for and won the BBL title in 2014-15. They finished second on the scoreboard this time, with five wins and three losses from eight games. In the semi-finals, the Scorchers defeated the Melbourne Stars by 18 runs while trying to defend a 145-run target. The show’s star was Andrew Tye, who ended up going 4 for 18. Despite Brett Lee’s two wickets in the final over of his final BBL game, the Scorchers won an exhilarating championship match off the last ball. Marsh was the hero yet again in the chase, scoring 73 runs off 59 balls.
In 2014-15, Micheal Klinger led the BBL in batting with 326 runs in 10 games and a strike rate of 129.36. Pacer Behrendorff and Arafat were once again the Scorchers’ most famous and successful bowlers, each taking 15 wickets in ten games at strike rates of 16 and 15, respectively. In 2016-17, the Scorchers managed to win their third BBL championship. This time, they surpassed the points table, with 5 wins and 3 losses from eight games. The two-time champions then battered the Melbourne Stars by seven wickets in the first semi-final, thanks to Mitchell Johnson’s unbelievable three-for-three figures, which included a massive Kevin Pietersen wicket.
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In Perth, the Scorchers annihilated the Sydney Sixers by nine wickets. Jhye Richardson’s unbelievable strike while batting first limited the Sixers to 141 runs. Klinger then ensured the Scorchers’ dominance in the chase, scoring 71 runs off 49 balls. Klinger led the Scorchers in run-scoring again in 2016-17, with 334 runs in 10 games and a strike rate of 126.99. Johnson was the franchise’s all-time leading wicket-taker, with 13 strikeouts in nine games at a strike rate of 15.6 and an economy rate of 5.91.
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