Aussie great calls for change as brutal 11,000km travel toll leaves Sixers short in BBL final

Sixers coach Greg Shipperd has already appealed to Cricket Australia to amend the schedule, as his side were defeated in the BBL15 final in their second trip west in less than a week.

The Sixers endured one of the most brutal travel tolls at the end of the their season – coming from Brisbane to Perth for Tuesday’s Qualifier final before heading back to Sydney for Friday’s must-win Challenger. They then headed back to Perth for Sunday’s decider where they were beaten by six wickets.

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“It wasn’t ideal – some of the scheduling was not what we were looking for,” Shipperd told media after his side’s loss in the final.

“We thought perhaps there could have been a day spaced the first time we came here out of Brisbane.

“Back to Sydney of course and back here again. You don’t get a chance to train the day before the game which I would have thought not many other sports are letting that happen at this elite level.

“We’ll feed some feedback back to headquarters – I think we were the only team to provide feedback back to Cricket Australia (on the schedule).

“I don’t know whether other teams are lazy in that respect or we were thinking we were going to be playing finals and so we were worrying about that sort of thing.

“There’s bigger fish that are making those decisions … If it was a holiday, yes we could have played tomorrow (on Australia Day), given our team that break to freshen up going into the game.

“Although that’s not a major excuse for us in the context of the season.”

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Australian great Mark Waugh agreed the schedule was too tight to ask for teams in the BBL finals.

“I just think Cricket Australia might need to look at the program – I don’t think one day is enough between the Friday and the Sunday,” he said.

“One day is a tough ask if you’re travelling from one side of the country to the other.”

Captain Moises Henriques said the loss – their fourth grand final defeat at the hands of Perth – “hurt” after coming in with confidence.

“It hurts – we had big plans, we really wanted to come over here and keep this Perth crowd relatively quiet,” he said to boos from the crowd.

“Unfortunately we weren’t good enough to do that tonight.”

Shipperd lamented his side’s batting in the loss, admitting they felt “15 to 20 runs off” where they needed to be.

“Losing six wickets in the last 30 balls takes a lot of that momentum to find that 20 runs we were looking for that may have enabled us to create some pressure,” he said.

“Scorchers opening pair did a terrific job to weather the initial onslaught.

“We were outplayed.”

Despite the loss, Shipperd was proud of his team – particularly star Steve Smith who finished the Sixers’ leading run scorer despite playing only the back end of the season.

“He always would be our most dangerous batter,” he laughed.

“He and Mitch (Starc) have been great servants of the franchise and Australian cricket. For them to play that Test series and then butter up and inject some life and energy and skill, talent into this competition so couldn’t speak more highly of both of them.

“I would have thought (Smith) is the best batter in the competition at the moment.

“They’ve had over the last five games … if you do a deep dive into the stats of some of the players in there at the moment, there’s a great case for Smith to be parachuted in (to the T20 World Cup squad).

“He just understands batting. He’s a great predictor, a great technician, he’s got all the strokes – he’s a 360 player and he’s got experience and confidence – all the things you need to be one of the world’s best batters.

“I’m sure he would like the opportunity.

“He’s talked about the Olympics in so many years’ time – that indicates to me he’d still love to play the game and in World Cups, big tournaments.”