Forget KFC

Forget KFC sponsoring the BBL, the Aussie equivalent of Everest or Anglian  must be the competition's biggest backers......

Cricket crowd numbers aren’t the only things getting smashed this austral summer, so are suburban windows, in a phenomenon Glaziers are calling the “Big Bash Effect”.  The extraordinary success of Cricket Australia's (CA) Big Bash League (BBL) has record numbers of kids picking up their bats and balls in streets, backyards and driveways across Australia.  That in turn has meant that the glazier business is booming as youngsters, determined to imitate their hard-hitting heroes, are hitting cricket balls through home windows at an alarming rate.

Mark Kearins of Sydney firm Kingsway Glass said: "We noticed last year, and it’s happened again this year, we are getting a lot more calls from mums and dads saying their kids have knocked a window in with a cricket ball.  I get around 20 per cent more work because of it, or around 10 extra jobs a week.  When a big BBL match is on, we will get calls the following morning asking for windows to be replaced.  We think kids are inside playing video games, but I reckon that the amount of windows I’ve been fixing over the last couple of years around this time means there are a fair few outside playing cricket”.

Crowds are averaging 30,000 for each BBL match and TV ratings are going through the roof. Last Saturday’s big derby between the Sydney Sixers and the Sydney Thunder was a sellout, with more than 39,000 packing into the Sydney Cricket Ground.  CA has always said one of the big aims of the BBL was to encourage kids to play the game and its popularity had already had an impact on playing numbers.

Zenon Kosmider. 

Sydney Sunday Telegraph