Ninja Arena

The Bellerive Oval in Hobart - which is known as the Ninja Arena for sponsorship reasons - is the only Tasmanian stadium which hosts international cricket matches at the present moment in time. It was known by another title before due to a naming rights agreement with Blundstone Footwear.  

In fact, the Bellerive Oval was Australia's first top-class cricket facility in Australia to secure a naming-rights sponsor in October 2011, with other big stadiums having since followed suit. 

With a capacity of 20,000, the Ninja Arena is not the biggest of cricket stadiums but it does have a lot of history, having thrown open its doors for the first time all the way back in 1914. The Oval's celebrations for the stadium's centenary year were notable and it has worked very hard on improving accessibility and sustainability of late with eco-friendly initiatives like solar panels. 

Unusually, fans attending matches at the Ninja Arena can travel to the cricket stadium via ferry, with a boat crossing available to link the ground with Hobart's central business district area. 

Ninja Arena Pitch Report

Often described as a paradise for batters, the Ninja Arena pitch report shows a lack of pace in the surface. If anything it gets even slower as the match goes on, so this can be a tough place for pace bowlers who will struggle to generate a lot of bounce out of the sluggish surface. 

Batters typically know that they can settle in for a long stint at the crease at the Ninja Arena, though of course in a T20 match they do not have a lot of time to assess the state of the pitch. 

Data from cricmetric.com shows batting first in a T20 game at the Ninja Arena is the right way to go if winning the toss. Teams batting first here win the match 51.9% of the time with the chasing side only coming out on top in 48.1% of the T20 matches at the Bellerive Oval venue in Hobart. 

Average first innings scores for T20 matches at the Ninja Arena are high compared to a lot of the other stadiums used for the Big Bash League competition in Australia. During 2023, the average first innings T20 total here was just over 160, which was significantly higher than the unusually low tally of just 136 from the previous year. In recent times, the highest average first innings score in Ninja Arena T20 matches was 178.9, which was recorded in the year 2020. 

Fast bowlers have the lowest average by far for T20 games at the Ninja Arena. This shows that while the Ninja Arena pitch report shows a slow surface, it does still offer some assistance in the shortest form of the game. Off-break bowlers, on the other hand, are expensive here in terms of the amount of runs it takes for them to get a wicket in a T20 match at the venue on average. 

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