Big Bash League.

The Big Bash League is Australia’s domestic Twenty20 competition, run by Cricket Australia and played through the middle of the Australian summer. It replaced the old state-based Big Bash in 2011-12, swapping six state sides for eight city clubs, and it has kept those same eight ever since — no expansion, no relocation, no rebrand. That stability is rare in franchise cricket, and it is what makes the tables above worth reading: 618 matches over 14 seasons, all of them played by the same eight names. The women’s competition, the WBBL, started in 2015-16 and runs alongside it; everything on this page is the men’s BBL.

How a BBL season works

Each club plays a home-and-away schedule from December into January, and the leading sides then go into a finals series. That finals format has been reshaped more than once — a four-team knockout in the early years, later a five-team series with an Eliminator, a Qualifier, a Knock-out and a Challenger all feeding The Final. Whoever wins the final is the champion, and that is the club recorded against each season in the roll of honour above. Playing conditions have been tinkered with too. The Power Surge, a two-over batting powerplay the batting side takes when it chooses, is the innovation that has stuck.

Why a season is written 2015-16 and not 2015

The tournament straddles New Year. The first ball goes down in December and the final is played the following January or February, so a season belongs to two calendar years and is written with both. Cricket Australia numbers them as well, which is where the BBL|01 to BBL|14 shorthand comes from: BBL|01 is 2011-12, BBL|14 is 2024-25. The two labels mean the same thing and both are used here.

The eight clubs, and where they play

Sydney and Melbourne carry two clubs each, which is exactly why the derbies matter. Sydney Sixers are the SCG side. Sydney Thunder are based at Sydney Showground Stadium out at Homebush and have taken home games to Manuka Oval in Canberra and to Stadium Australia. Melbourne Stars play at the MCG, Melbourne Renegades across the river at Docklands, with the odd trip down the highway to Geelong. The other four take a capital apiece: Adelaide Strikers at Adelaide Oval in South Australia, Brisbane Heat at the Gabba in Queensland, Perth Scorchers in Western Australia — the WACA first, Perth Stadium since — and Hobart Hurricanes at Bellerive Oval in Tasmania, with a handful of matches up at Launceston.

The Melbourne derby and the Sydney derby

Two fixtures come around more often than any other. The Melbourne derby has been played 27 times and Melbourne Stars lead it 17-10. The Sydney derby has been played 27 times and Sydney Sixers lead it 17-7. Neither is a friendly. The Melbourne derby regularly pulls the biggest home-and-away crowd of the summer, and in Sydney both clubs have a title in the cabinet, which the Melbourne pair cannot say between them.

How these figures are worked out

Every number here is computed from ball-by-ball records of Big Bash matches: each delivery, the runs off it, the extras and any dismissal, added up by our own scripts rather than copied from another statistics provider. A club’s win rate is wins divided by matches played, so the 14 matches that finished without a result — tied or washed out — count against every side equally. Batting and bowling tables are per club rather than per career, which means a player who has turned out for two franchises appears under both, with the runs and wickets he made at each. Head-to-head and ground records are counted the same way, from the result as it stands on the scorecard.