A season after lawsuits and squabbling over the diminished quality of the Big Bash batting records are tumbling amid an onslaught of runs highlighted by the best chase in tournament history.
On Thursday night in Adelaide the Strikers performed not only the biggest run chase in history thanks to a maiden BBL hundred from stand-in captain Matt Short, it was the fifth biggest chase in world T20 history.
Adelaide’s monstrous score of 230, racked up with balls to spare, was the highest score this season, knocking off the Hurricane’s 229, which was the most the Hobart outfit has ever scored.
It was the second game this season in which both teams passed 200 runs, regarded as the benchmark for a massive T20 total, with five of the top seven scores in BBL history having come not just in this tournament, but in the past two weeks.
With the BBL season having just reached the halfway mark, and just 28 matches completed, there have already been 28 scores in excess of 150, including the six scores above 200.
For context, in all of last season, which was 63 games, there were just nine scores of 200 or more, a tally which included the monstrous 273 put on by the Melbourne Stars at the MCG.
But last season there were also four team totals of under 100 runs.
So far this season, that has only happened once, when the Sydney Thunder, who are now on top of the BBL table, were bowled out for a world record low 15, an outlier in a season where the next lowest is 108.
Chris Lynn, who has hit more sixes in BBL history than anyone, has surged back to beast-mode this season after moving to Adelaide and leads the competition with 324 runs, one of two players, along with Short, who have over 300 runs already, and one of eight with more than 200.
There could be more massive totals to come too with Lynn declaring his best is yet to come.
“I know I’ve still got plenty of runs left in me. That’s the main thing, I still feel sharp,” he said.
“I feel like I‘m building nicely (and) I’m going to make a couple of teams pay.”
The lawsuit began by Channel 7 two summers ago in an attempt to get out of its contract with Cricket Australia, which declared the quality of the Big Bash had not delivered enough to meet its broadcast contract obligations, was ended as part of the new $1.512 billion TV rights contract confirmed this week.
TOP 10 BBL SCORES
273/2 Stars v Hurricanes, MCG 19 Jan 2022
232/5 Thunder v Sixers Adelaide Oval 22 Jan 2021
230/3 Strikers v Hurricanes Adelaide Oval 5 Jan 2023
229/7 Scorchers 1 v Stars Junction Oval 23 Dec 2022
229/4 Hurricanes v Strikers Adelaide Oval 5 Jan 2023
228/6 Thunder v Hurricanes Albury 31 Dec 2022
224/5 Heat v Sixers Brisbane 1 Jan 2023
223/8 Hurricanes v Renegades Melbourne (Docklands) 12 Jan 2017
222/4 Renegades v Hurricanes Melbourne (Docklands) 12 Jan 2017
219/1 Stars v Sixers Melbourne 12 Jan 2020
