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Shane Watson & Usman Khawaja criticise new BBL rules | Australian cricketers Shane Watson and Usman Khawaja have criticised the new BBL rules

The upcoming Big Bash League is in the news as senior players have criticised the addition of new rules. Recently Cricket Australia league’s consultant Trent Woodhill introduced three additions – ‘Power Surge’, the ‘X Factor Player’ and the ‘Bash Boost’ in the BBL.

However, Shane Watson calls it a misguided attempt to reinvigorate the tournament. In his blog post, he said that the “complexities that these new ‘science experiments’ are going to create for the viewers, let alone the players and coaches, when none of these have been tried and tested at lower levels, have really taken the wind out of my sails.” I just can’t seem to get my head around why there are people out there who are trying to reinvent the wheel when the wheel was not broken”, he said.

Instead, the player made suggestions to add world-class players playing in world-class pitches to garner eyeballs from the fans. “The simple game plan in my mind is to get the world’s best cricketers playing on world-class pitches and guess what, you will get world-class cricket to watch for the cricket lovers out there and we will all be on the edge of our seats admiring the feats of these amazing cricketers,” he added.

Along with Watson, Sydney Thunder batsman Usman Khawaja wrote in his tweet how the new BBL rules look complicated to him. “So had a day to think about new BBL rules. My biggest issue is that the BBL is all about (and great at) getting new people involved whom have never played,” tweeted Usman Khawaja.

“But the rule changes complicate what’s already a very complicated game (for newcomers). Shouldn’t we be going the other way?” he added.

Written by Anjali Jha. Follow Anjali on Twitter today.