Stars To WBBL: Our Team; Our Rules

BBL's Melbourne Stars have issued a shot across the bows of Cricket Australia over who controls the mooted WBBL franchises.

Cricket Australia have previously said that they expect to control the WBBL teams and decide who plays where, presumably to mitigate the risk of one or two franchises snapping up all the best players and ruining the tournament as a competitive spectacle.

But reading between the lines of an interview with Jesse Hogan in the Sydney Morning Herald, Stars Chief Exec Clint Cooper has basically told Cricket Australia that if the Women's team are going to share the Stars brand and the Stars uniform, then it will be on the Stars terms, not CA's; and one of those terms is that the Stars handle player recruitment and management themselves.

The path to WBBL was never going to be plain-sailing, but with tensions already coming to the fore, what happens off the field could be as fascinating as what happens on it; and it will be interesting to see how this one plays out!