BBL goes to India! Gades to face reigning champs in Chennai

Cricket Australia has confirmed Melbourne Renegades will play Perth Scorchers in Chennai this December in what the league anticipates will be the most watched game in Big Bash history.

The match will be the first Big Bash League fixture outside Australia and will launch the KFC BBL|16 season on Saturday, December 12, following play on day four of the first Test between Australia and New Zealand in Perth.

The Renegades will be the designated home team with the match at the MA Chidambaram Stadium to begin at 2.40pm local time and broadcast live to Australian viewers on Channel Seven, 7plus, Kayo Sports and Fox Cricket from 8.10pm AEDT and 5.10pm AWST.

Both Australian networks will send commentary teams to Chennai and JioStar will broadcast the match to Indian viewers. The league is aiming to sell out the 38,000-seat stadium for the season opener, with packages to be available for travelling fans (register your interest here).

Alistair Dobson, CA's general manager of Big Bash Leagues, said the opportunity to play in India reinforced the BBL's appeal as a global competition with support within and beyond Australia's borders.

He added it was often underestimated within Australia how much of a following the Big Bash has around the world, particularly in India.

Indeed, the TV audience in India for BBL matches last summer was 50 per cent higher than those tuning into the Ashes Tests.

The BBL's subcontinental venture follows a growing trend across global sport to expose national competitions to markets abroad, with America's NFL and NBA among the world's premier sporting leagues to play outside its traditional borders.

The NFL has rapidly expanded its global footprint in recent years, with the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers to play in front of a sold-out MCG in September, while English Premier League clubs have previously played pre-season friendlies in front of crowds in excess of 75,000 at Melbourne's iconic sporting venue.

The landmark BBL match has the support of both country's governments, with cricket viewed as a vehicle to deepen the relationship between Australia and India.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Indian counterpart Narendra Modi unveiled the fixture during a joint visit to the MCG on Friday.

"Our sport has such an authentic connection in India," Dobson said. "This game is also part of a much bigger initiative across both our governments and shows that cricket is a connector for both our countries, and that both the Australian and Indian governments see that and want to be part of it.

"We're hugely excited by the opportunity and we expect the match will be the most-watched game in Australian domestic league history for any sport.

"We're grateful for the support of the Australian government and the Centre for Australia-India Relations in helping bring this historic match to life."

CA believes taking the BBL to India will drive exponential growth in fan engagement, viewership and awareness of the competition and its teams in the world's biggest cricket market.

"Every league or competition has their own unique strengths. We think the BBL has its own unique flavour that we want to bring and hopefully people seeing it up close in their own backyard only strengthens that interest in the competition," Dobson added.

Chennai was endorsed by the BCCI and Australian Consul-General Silai Zaki as an ideal location due to its passion for cricket and loyalty to its Indian Premier League team, the Super Kings, the competition's most supported franchise on social media with 48.4 million followers across their platforms.

The move to expand the league's horizons comes at a decisive juncture for Australian cricket as CA explores options to introduce private investment into Big Bash clubs.

The Renegades and Scorchers are likely to be among the first Big Bash clubs to test the market if CA, the six states and players' union, the Australian Cricketers' Association, agree to an investment model.

The BBL will be the first foreign cricket league to take a game to India. The Scorchers, Brisbane Heat and Hobart Hurricanes played T20 matches in the country more than a decade ago in the now defunct Champions League tournament, while CA previously held a Sheffield Shield fixture in New Zealand, near Christchurch, when NSW drew with WA in 2016.

Australia last played in Chennai during the 2023 ODI World Cup where they were badly beaten by India in their first game of the tournament before going on to stun the hosts in the final to lift the trophy a month later in Ahmedabad.

Next year's second Border-Gavaskar Trophy Test will be the national men's team's next visit to Chepauk Stadium, which famously hosted a tied Test between the two sides in 1986 when the city was called Madras.

Scorchers stars Mitch Marsh and Cooper Connolly will have the greatest familiarity with the venue having played there during this year's IPL season, the latter hitting 36 off 22 balls in just his second match in the competition.

Dobson said there was interest from all eight clubs in being part of the match, with the Renegades preferred as the home team due to a greater flexibility around their home schedule for BBL|16 having moved away from Marvel Stadium this summer.

The Scorchers' history as the world's most successful T20 franchise with six titles, along with their status as defending champions and with star players Marsh and Connolly coming off strong IPL campaigns this year, gave Perth the edge as the second team.