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 o