Warnie and Liz put the box office into the BBL. Now their club is gone

On Friday morning, the young son of former Melbourne Stars cricketer Rob Quiney pulled on his green Stars top. “Hey buddy,” began Quiney, “I haven’t told you yet, but …”

How to explain to a six-year-old the disappearance of his team, much less the commercial upheaval behind it? Quiney had a crack. “There may not be any more Melbourne Stars. The competition will gradually go a different way.”

On the plus side, there would be a new Victorian team in the Big Bash League for the family to get behind, explained Quiney, who made 5674 first-class runs for his state. “I want him to have that connection. I’ll explain more when he’s older.”

What cricket will look like by then, who can say. But Cricket Victoria’s move to extinguish the Stars and the Melbourne Renegades as we know them, and the plan to sell a second, “clean” BBL licence to private investors, potentially an Indian Premier League ownership group, meant the boardroom fight over the future of Australian cricket this week exploded into full public view.

It also caused an almighty split, with Cricket Victoria bounding ahead in the franchise revolution, leaving NSW, Queensland and South Australia (who are not convinced of the need to privatise the BBL) to hurl verbal bouncers at Cricket Australia bosses, who say they are yet to approve Victoria’s plans.

The Renegades could still play in red this summer if the licence is not sold before then, but the Stars will be absorbed into the new Victorian franchise. They will play at the MCG in navy blue and, in full retro style, could even be called the Bushrangers, the state team moniker retired from public use eight years ago.

When the Stars were born, ahead of the inaugural BBL season of 2011-12, president Eddie McGuire had global plans.

Rather than seeing Australian BBL clubs become satellites of the Indian Premier League, McGuire wanted the Stars to be the centrepiece of a global network of teams in the UK, south Asia and elsewhere, all wearing a version of the green shirts worn proudly by Shane Warne, Kevin Pietersen and Glenn Maxwell.

“I had far bigger aspirations for the Stars but couldn’t get the licence owners to come with us with the ideas,” McGuire said.

“I always wanted the Renegades and the Stars to play Sheffield Shield so you could get more players playing first-class cricket and picking up the catchment worldwide, [to] give the kids a real opportunity and a pathway.”

Nonetheless, the BBL at its peak did deliver on its promise to become a cash cow at a time domestic cricket was draining finances. At the 2016 Melbourne derby, the MCG ran out of hot chips, so unanticipated was the 80,000-strong crowd.

While that crowd hasn’t been beaten in the decade since, last year’s MCG derby still drew 68,000 and Quiney says the rivalry between the teams was real.

Warne brought showbiz, while the Stars gave him a chance to play in front of his kids while they were teenagers, old enough to enjoy their dad’s on-field exploits.

“Warnie lived a different life and the boys saw glimpses of that when we walked through the airport with [Warne’s partner at the time, actor] Liz Hurley, having 15 cameras in their face,” says Quiney. “But other times he was a teammate and an amazing one, and he was trying to build something like he did with the Rajasthan Royals [in the IPL].”

Alas, the Stars’ 15 years in the BBL did not deliver a title. The death of the rivalry is a shame, according to a junior coach at Yarraville Cricket Club, Matthew Wealands. “Battle lines were drawn at our club, we’d have a dozen people who would go to the derby together,” he said.

In attempting to explain the changes to members of the under-11s this week, he encountered some issues. “Nobody knows what a bushranger is,” said Wealands, whose kids, Toby and Phoebe, are Renegades fans who love to watch Jake Fraser-McGurk.

“[But] we’re cricket tragics, and we will support the local, state-based team.

“Toby has a lovely Renegades top that’s a size-and-a-half too big for him, which we were hoping would get him through another couple of years, and now we’re going to have get a whole new kit!”

McGuire and his fellow former BBL club directors John Wylie (also the Stars) and Jason Dunstall and James Brayshaw (who helmed the Renegades) were saddened to see the club brands “retired”.

But at the same time, McGuire always knew that the clubs they looked after between 2011 and 2019 were grown with half an eye on selling them. While it is far from certain that a sale of the Renegades licence will still take place as other state associations still need to agree on the path forward, McGuire bowed to the inevitability of changes in sport.

“I don’t know the books, but it was started originally because of the finances of Cricket Australia, and now it ended because of the finances of Cricket Australia. It was a business move by CA, and it was hugely successful, it’s made a truckload of money for them, and now they go to the next step with it, and that’s where it’s at.

“Sport evolves, but I would’ve liked to see the Stars name remain because there’s 16 years of a lot of work on branding and social equity with supporters, and an honour board with some big names on it.

“Sometimes you need to make changes. I took Collingwood out of Victoria Park. The world of cricket has been very volatile and changing economy and set-up, so for them they’ve got to play the hand they have. I’ll be barracking for Victoria.”

The notion of a team for all Victorians, as explained this week by CV’s chief executive Nick Cummins, is actually similar to the idea that McGuire first had for the club in 2011.

“From the moment these clubs were established, CA and CV had an eye on selling them,” he said. “That’s why the colours were the way they were – their original ambition was to sell to a Pakistani businessman. I came in and said, ‘No, I want to build the Melbourne Stars like an AFL club and preferably with all the proceeds we make going to junior cricket’.

“If they go back to what the original idea was, and that is make it a Victorian team of people who live around the corner and played in the local parks and have a narrative, and bring in some internationals to augment that, then, yeah, I think it’s got a great chance.

“But you can’t have a Victorian team that wears the Big V and is filled with people who can’t find Melbourne on the map.”

The Sunrisers Hyderabad group, which employs Pat Cummins, Travis Head and Australian assistant coach Dan Vettori in the IPL, are one touted buyer for the Renegades licence. Rajasthan, the team currently riding on the coattails of 15-year-old prodigy Vaibhav Suryavanshi, are another.

Nick Cummins is at pains to point out that CV want to aggregate the fan followings of both existing teams around the side set to wear state colours at the MCG.

“I would stress that at no point have we considered selling 100 per cent of the Melbourne Renegades, that has been the media writing that,” he said. “My view for a long time has been, ‘Well then we should sell one of our licences and keep the other’.

“But all of the people who work for the Renegades, play for and sponsor and are members of the Renegades, are actually members of Cricket Victoria. So they’re not for sale. What’s for sale is the opportunity to participate in the BBL in Melbourne. That’s the premise I’ve been operating under.”

In terms of timing, Cummins said possible investors ranged from those who wanted to have a new name and brand in place for this summer, to those who felt it would take far longer to set up.

“If we sell it to someone who doesn’t want to take over this summer, they will most likely have to play as the Renegades, which is annoying, but better than playing as ‘team eight’,” he said. “If a team takes over and says, ‘We’d love to change it’, then bang – that happens straight away.”

Either way, CV’s Cummins and chair Ross Hepburn have been adamant that their actions this week needed to show commitment to a sale, whatever the rest of the cricket system might think.

“You can’t half sell,” Cummins said. “You’ve either got to commit and signal to the market that you’re genuine about selling, or not sell.”

That gesture of commitment has not gone down well in NSW, South Australia or Queensland. The chairs and CEOs of those states challenged CA’s chiefs Mike Baird and Todd Greenberg on Thursday afternoon, and there is still scepticism about the level of discussions between CV and CA about the move.

Similarly to the dynamic in 2020, where CA and CV were totally at odds with NSW over the position of cricket’s finances, this is a battle between pessimistic readers of financial forecasts and those more optimistic about the future.

It is said that among many of CA’s forecasts is the notion that the next home Ashes summer in 2029-30 will see a 30 per cent reduction in the crowds that turned out this time, despite two of the Tests finishing inside two days.

Estimates for domestic and overseas broadcast rights are also said to be extremely conservative, if not outright fearful.

Whatever way those numbers are interpreted, there is also the evidence of the past two summers, which broke all manner of records for CA and host venues.

“Cricket’s never been bigger, and we’re doing this?” mused one state chair. It’s a fair question.

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