Scorchers didn't win silver but lost gold

Fifty-nine games, eight weeks, and the sport's visibility has never been higher. The Melbourne derby crowd on New Year's Day finished at 24,000, a record by more than 9000. Television audiences set records, with the final peaking at 690,000 and averaging 412,500. Online streams and highlights got 6.9 million views.

This was helped by better scheduling, with games in less crowded bunches, and spread over a broader range of venues and start times. A dozen games went live on free-to-air TV.

At its best, the standard was brilliant: individual feats, team engine rooms, centuries, Super Overs, five-fors, airborne catches, new faces, close chases, a competition ladder alive until the final day. Its worst showed the gulf between the best players and the bottom tier, especially in the prevalence of batting collapses and of run-outs within them. This will improve as the player pool widens.

More immediately, administrators could address disparities with the men's Big Bash. Women's sides lose points for slow over rates where men do not. WBBL finalists have venues decided by men's results. The excessive time gap between double-header games wipes out much of the advantage of holding two games together. That aside, what was a Cricket Australia experiment has quickly come to look solid indeed.

Sydney Sixers

If one team was solid, it was the eventual champion. Like last year, Sydney's pink side wobbled early before starting a winning streak; in this case three losses from four, before a run of seven wins was ended by a Super Over. Unlike last year, the Sixers emerged from the final triumphant. Key was the squad's depth.

Teenager Ashleigh Gardner found ways to contribute when the middle order was needed, scoring between 35 and 56 in seven different innings. Most often this was in unison with New Zealander Sarah McGlashan, the two doing repair work when the openers failed. They finished fifth and eighth respectively on the runs list, with Gardner batting herself into the national squad.

Inexplicably unlucky not to be joining her was Sarah Aley, who led the competition with 28 wickets and a gong-winning four in the final. The excellent Marizanne Kapp left to play for South Africa, Ellyse Perry pulled a hamstring late in the season, but Aley led the seam attack in their absence to great effect.

Perry's absence may have had its best effect on stand-in captain Alyssa Healy. The wicketkeeper smashed 201 runs opening the batting in her three games in charge, including both her team's finals, to well and truly lead from the front. There might be a tussle for the job next year.

One step further than last year, but wasn't enough for the team out west. They know they threw away a title after good fortune gave them a home final. With the best opening bowling pair on the planet, they were playing with a stacked deck. They will ponder how a batting line-up crammed with international talent couldn't get it done when it mattered most.

For all that, the Scorchers will go in favourites to salute next season, as they did in the first two editions, if they can retain the key personnel who made them such a consistent force.

Elyse Villani and Nicole Bolton tallied 766 runs between them at the top of the list, the Australian opening pair routinely laying a foundation for scores well in excess of a run a ball. Villani's five half-centuries equalled the best mark in the competition. Suzie Bates, the captain, completed the top three with 310 runs herself.

Katherine Brunt and Anya Shrubsole are Lennon and McCartney with new ball in hand, greater than the sum of their parts in constricting batsmen at either end of the innings. Brunt coupled that with a boost up the batting order, clobbering 216 runs at a strike-rate of 132 - the second-best in the tournament.

20-year-old all-rounder Heather Graham showed enough with bat and ball to suggest a national call-up won't be far away, while at the same age Piepa Cleary became the WBBL's most frugal and effective seamer after Christmas. The depth chart is strong. For all that, there's no sugar-coating the fact that rather on this occasion, Perth didn't win silver but lost gold.

Brisbane Heat

Semi-finalists after a poor previous season, Brisbane Heat this year were all about Beth Mooney and Deandra Dottin. Too much, really. Mooney was Player of the Tournament for her 400 runs while opening the batting and keeping wickets. Through the middle of the season, six of Brisbane's seven wins came when Mooney made 45 or more. When she failed, they slumped to four losses.

Dottin gave it her all to win Heat their first and last games of the season. First it was 60 not out from 44 balls to smash a tough run chase, then it was a fielding collision to smash her face. Returning in time for the must-win last fixture, Dottin made 51, bowled the last regulation over to force a Super Over, in which she conceded four before coming out to bat in the reply.

With neither player firing in the final, the support wasn't there. Kirby Short was good in partnership with Mooney, but struggled for pace. Jess Jonassen bowled beautifully throughout, but someone with her batting class should have returned a score over 30. Indian top-order import Smriti Mandhana had a horror trip, half a dozen single-figure scores in nine innings. In desperation, more than anything, she was thrown the ball and started jagging a few wickets. Brisbane needed more of that kind of sharing, but in the end too much was left to too few.

Hobart Hurricanes

Irrepressible, impossible not to like, but not enough in the tank to progress from semi-finals to the tournament decider. Truth told, the 103-run walloping they received from the Sydney Sixers reflected the gap between the two sides. In six attempts Hobart haven't overcome the magenta maestras.

Going into Christmas having lost just the one game, Heather Knight's side were well placed to defy the fact that they boasted of no current Australia international. It was a bumpy ride, culminating in a final two-game weekend against the Melbourne Stars with one win probably sufficient. Amy Satterthwaite's 15 season wickets included a five-for, but she managed to concede 12 runs off two balls to blow the first win. Next day, it came down to a final-over pair of boundaries from Corinne Hall to get them, at last, over the line.

Knight was less prolific than in season one but still led the team's runs list with 334. Satterthwaite had 323 at an imposing 46, and while fellow import Hayley Matthews offered just 185 runs across 13 innings, she did take 20 wickets with her tweakers - the third-highest tally of the season. That included a five-wicket bag to set up a clutch late-season win against the Heat.

Losing former international Julie Hunter to retirement at season's end will hurt - highly effective as the attack-leader - but they will be buoyed by form of the recruit of the year, Georgia Redmayne. The New South Wales native couldn't get a WBBL game a year ago, but racked up 278 runs as a reliable opener and kept wickets well. But they will need more hidden gems where that came from to go from plucky competitors to a serious title chance.

Melbourne Stars

For their first few games, Melbourne Stars were shaking off the one-player-team tag. Katie Mack, Emma Inglis and Jess Cameron were making runs in support, and few wins were on the board. Yet a few weeks later they were looking at another 500-run season for Meg Lanning. She delivered and topped the tournament run charts, but it was another year in which her team didn't make the semi-finals.

She had a top score of 97 not out, five fifties, three fewer innings than most who played finals, and all this at a strike rate of 120, comfortably in the best couple in the competition. Yet, somehow they didn't translate into wins at all times. Scrolling down the WBBL batting list, you have to go to 17th to find Inglis, 25th and 26th for Cameron and Katie Mack, and 42nd for Natalie Sciver, the talented England all-rounder once again a bust on Australian shores.

In the other discipline, Gemma Triscari's 13 wickets was the best offer from a Stars bowler where the ladder leader had 28. Leg-spinner Kristen Beams bowled beautifully, just about putting her team into a semi-final singlehandedly, but only played seven games thanks to injury. Morna Nielsen took 18 wickets at 11 last season, but this time it was six wickets at 40.83. Even with some signs of progress, it will take a very trusting Stars management to stick with a team resembling this one for a third time around.

Sydney Thunder

From the opening weekend, the Thunder were playing catch-up in their title defence. That job didn't get easier as the western Sydney side couldn't put together back-to-back wins. Being mathematically in with a chance of making finals by the last weekend was a result of sneaking past the Sixers via a Super Over and a boundary countback.

Back at the beginning, sloppy bowling allowed the Stars too many for even Harmanpreet Kaur to chase down despite entering the tournament in the most emphatic way with a pair of glorious sixes in a dramatic chase. But the Indian recruit contributed without dominating again until the Thunder's run was over.

Captain Alex Blackwell was excellent week in, week out, with 386 runs, and even taking the wicketkeeping gloves late in the season, while West Indies superstar Stafanie Taylor was well down on her dominant form, failing to crack 300 runs this time round.

No player better illustrated the slide than young gun Naomi Stalenberg. Her hard hitting in the inaugural season won her an Australian cap twelve months ago, but second time around she was worth 80 runs to the Thunder all season. It was the same for Australian seamer Lauren Cheatle, who came away with two wickets from seven starts in an interrupted campaign.

This is a side that should get better, simply because the talent at their disposal would be hard pressed to go any worse.

Melbourne Renegades

A frustrating, tantalising, but ultimately lovable side, Melbourne Renegades make you appreciate the frailties of human capacity while also admiring its resistance. In the first WBBL season the team in red was a shambles, barely able to cobble together a couple of wins the whole summer. Their batting was especially dire.

Second time around, and this Renegades team chased 128 against Adelaide, 131 against Perth, 127 against the Stars, dusted off a couple of Duckworth-Lewis jobs, then finished up with 148 to chase against the table-topping Sixers, and knocked that off with eight balls to spare.

In the meantime, there were days when they were bowled out for 102 or restricted to 93. They fumbled more than they held. But the progress was palpable. Kris Britt, Rachel Priest and Danielle Wyatt were the mainstays with the bat, and the Mollies - Molly Strano and Sophie Molineux - both showed their ability to reinvent themselves as attacking all-rounders.

Strano is now in the Australian squad after 21 wickets, second-most in the WBBL, while Molineux grabbed the public imagination after the WBBL02 opening weekend, where she took 4 for 18, nailed a run-out, then smacked 28 not out from 18 balls to dust off that Adelaide win.

Add to that the potential upside of this team: New Zealand import Lea Tahuhu bowled fast and fielded well, Southern Stars hitter Grace Harris was way below her best but is still a potential superstar, teenage quick Maitlan Brown turned in some brilliantly frugal spells and showed promise with the bat, while Annabel Sutherland is an investment in the future. Add one more player of class in the top order, and this outfit could be next year's big mover.

Adelaide Strikers

Sometimes in this game when it goes bad, it goes really bad. Pre-tournament, this column listed the Strikers as the smokey to win the whole thing. Adelaide had recruited former England captain Charlotte Edwards, nearly as effective as ever, and Tammy Beaumont, who rewrote a host of records last summer for England. Regardless, Adelaide finished last by the proverbial length of the straight.

Neither recruit fired a match-winning shot until their season was over. That grim reality kicked in before the penultimate weekend. Yet as recently as Boxing Day, it felt like Adelaide's trajectory was going anywhere but nine losses on the bounce. Sure, they were light on for contributors, but they had Sophie Devine.

The day after Christmas, the New Zealand international used 48 balls to crash the only century of WBBL02, capturing a third - and ultimately, final - win. This followed three instances where she had made 40 or more. Devine briefly returned home to her domestic T20 competition, the Sixers saw Adelaide off in a close one, and nothing went right thereafter.

Only Megan Schutt got wickets in double digits. She and leg-spinner Amanda Wellington barely gave away a run, but without Adelaide scoring any, there wasn't much that could be done. With two fifties in dead games on the last weekend, Beaumont joined Devine as the only Adelaide players to pass 200 runs. Australian bowling all-rounder Sarah Coyte claimed seven expensive wickets while scoring 26 in ten innings. The team's fortunes spiralled. What a mess.