BBL Season 6 (2016-17): Perth Scorchers Win Third Title by 9 Wickets in the Last-Ever BBL Final at the WACA

Perth Scorchers won their third Big Bash League title on 28 January 2017 at the WACA Ground in Perth, defeating Sydney Sixers by 9 wickets with 25 balls to spare — the most dominant winning margin in any BBL final to that point. Sixers posted 141/9; Scorchers overhauled it at 144/1, with Michael Klinger scoring 71* and Sam Whiteman contributing 41. Jhye Richardson took 3/30 as Player of the Match, aged just 20. Chris Lynn (Brisbane Heat) won Player of the Tournament for the second consecutive season — 309 runs in just 5 matches including 26 sixes. Sean Abbott (Sydney Sixers) took 20 wickets across the season.

The Last BBL Game at the WACA — Perth's Home Moving to Optus Stadium

Perth Scorchers' BBL Season 6 final against Sydney Sixers at the WACA Ground in Perth was the last BBL match ever played at the Western Australian Cricket Association ground — a venue that had hosted Test cricket, ODIs, and domestic competition for decades. The Scorchers' new home — Optus Stadium, later renamed Perth Stadium — opened in 2018, transferring the franchise's BBL home games to a 60,000-capacity purpose-built stadium that gave the Scorchers the largest regular BBL crowd capacity of any franchise. The WACA's final BBL game — a 9-wicket Scorchers victory in a championship final — gave one of Australian cricket's most historic grounds a conclusive championship ending before the franchise moved across Perth.

Jhye Richardson: 3/30 at Age 20 — Player of the Match in a Final

Jhye Richardson's 3/30 in the BBL Season 6 final — at age 20, in only his second BBL season — was the bowling performance that restricted Sydney Sixers to 141/9 and made Scorchers' 9-wicket chase straightforward. Richardson, Western Australia's right-arm fast-medium bowler, was beginning the trajectory that would see him become one of Australia's most promising international pace bowlers over the following years. His ability at 20 to bowl at the death in a championship final and take 3 wickets — alongside Tim Bresnan's 3/40 in the same innings — compressed the Sixers' scoring and gave the Scorchers' batting line-up a manageable target. Richardson's Player of the Match award in the final at the WACA was the first major individual award of a career that would subsequently include Test selection.

BBL Season 6 in Context

BBL Season 6 (2016-17) was played across December 2016 and January 2017 in the competition's sixth iteration — by which point the BBL had established itself as a genuine competitor for Australian summer sports audiences, with consistent high broadcast ratings and sold-out major venues. Perth Scorchers' 9-wicket final victory was the competition's most one-sided title-deciding result — Sixers' 141/9 comprehensively outbowled by Scorchers' attack, then the chase completed with such minimal difficulty that only one wicket fell. The WACA's final BBL chapter — a Scorchers championship — gave Western Australian cricket a farewell to one of the country's most historically significant grounds that matched the occasion's sentiment.