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Cricket Victoria has killed off both the Melbourne Stars and Melbourne Renegades in an extraordinary reset triggered by the privatisation of Australian cricket.<\/p>\n
Chief executive Nick Cummins confirmed on Wednesday that Cricket Victoria would only operate a single BBL team from now on, potentially known as the Bushrangers, while the second franchise would be sold off to raise funds.<\/p>\n
Both the Stars and Renegades, clubs which date back 15 years and include former players Shane Warne and Muttiah Muralitharan, will now be lost to Australian cricket.<\/p>\n \u201cOur intention is to go back to the original BBL team that we had, and have a team that is for everyone in Victoria, that wears the \u2018big V\u2019, that would still be called Melbourne,\u201d Cummins said on SEN. \u201cIt\u2019s a city-based team, but ultimately, a team that all Victorians connected to Victorian cricket can get behind,\u201d Cummins said.<\/p>\n The Bushrangers competed in the state-based T20 competition that pre-dated the BBL\u2019s establishment in 2011.<\/p>\n The revival of the traditional Victorian branding is based on market research. \u201cWe ran extensive focus groups back in January, February, around this, about: \u2018OK, if we sold a team would you support the other team?\u2019 All fans said no, they wouldn\u2019t. \u2018Would you support a team that was a Victorian team?\u2019 And fans said yes, they would.\u201d<\/p>\n Cummins accepted that some Stars and Renegades fans will be disappointed. \u201cIt\u2019s been part of all of their life,\u201d he said. \u201cThe Stars and the Renegades do mean a lot to a lot of people and we\u2019ve recognised that, and [are] very conscious of that.\u201d<\/p>\n He hoped \u201cthe majority\u201d would support the new Cricket Victoria-run team, although its name was still to be confirmed. \u201c\u2018The Bushrangers\u2019 is in play, and that\u2019s something that holds a lot of emotion and heritage for a lot of fans. What we need to consider though is that the Bushrangers is fairly gender-specific and, as opposed to when the Bushrangers existed previously, now we\u2019ve got a WBBL team as well as a BBL team so we are mindful of that.\u201d<\/p>\n The other Victorian franchise will be sold almost certainly to international investors, as the IPL\u2019s multi-club owners keenly await the outcome of Cricket Australia\u2019s privatisation process.<\/p>\n This is likely to take months, leaving the BBL in a transitional mode in 2026-27 and the Victorian franchises in limbo. One proposal is for the Renegades to continue to operate on a caretaker basis before new owners take over the following year.<\/p>\n When the sale process is complete, Cummins said there will still be a so-called \u2018Melbourne derby\u2019 between the privatised entity and Cricket Victoria\u2019s team, and it could actually be bigger than previous editions. More than 68,000 fans attracted the derby in January, the highest attendance for the BBL season.<\/p>\n \u201cA, the derby will remain, there\u2019ll still be two teams in Melbourne,\u201d Cummins said. \u201cBut B, we think that second team will be able to activate parts of our community that perhaps haven\u2019t been all that engaged in Big Bash.\u201d<\/p>\n Cricket Victoria and Cricket New South Wales faced a different proposition to other state bodies when BBL privatisation was put forward, as each operated two franchises.<\/p>\n CNSW has chosen not to be involved in the process run by Cricket Australia, alongside Queensland.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n