{"id":739888,"date":"2026-06-16T09:48:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T09:48:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/739888\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T09:48:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T09:48:19","slug":"big-bash-league-privatisation-the-melbourne-stars-have-been-revived-after-a-two-week-merger-saga-with-the-renegades-that-engulfed-cricket-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/739888\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Bash League privatisation: The Melbourne Stars have been revived after a two-week merger saga with the Renegades that engulfed Cricket Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"DanielSave<\/p>\n

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AAA<\/p>\n

The Melbourne Stars will live on for at least one more season, two weeks after the BBL club name was killed off by Cricket Victoria.<\/p>\n

CV chief executive Nick Cummins confirmed an extraordinary end to the saga around the \u201cmerger\u201d of the Stars and the Melbourne Renegades.<\/p>\n

Having extinguished the Stars brand pending Cricket Australia approval on June 2, Cummins said that the Melbourne Stars would now take the field next season, and did not rule out the green uniforms remaining in perpetuity.<\/p>\n

\"AaronAaron Finch and Glenn Maxwell in 2019 when they led the Melbourne Renegades and Stars, respectively.Chris Hopkins<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you can rule in is that the Stars will play as the Stars,\u201d Cummins told this masthead. <\/p>\n

Cummins reiterated that the Stars team would still be the team of Cricket Victoria, while the Renegades would play next season in caretaker mode, ahead of a possible 100 per cent sale to a private investor.<\/p>\n

Editor’s pick\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

The revival of the Stars after they were set to be renamed the Melbourne Rangers or similar<\/a>, recalled short-lived merger attempts in the AFL like those of the \u201cFitzroy Bulldogs\u201d in 1989 and the \u201cMelbourne Hawks\u201d in 1996.<\/p>\n

The revival was driven by the objections of other states to the move, which were made clear to Cricket Victoria at a meeting inside Cricket Australia\u2019s Jolimont headquarters on Monday.<\/p>\n

At that meeting, states agreed in-principle to a phased model for the sale of clubs, subject to a series of major caveats \u2013 including reform of the Cricket Australia board \u2013 that must be settled before Victoria\u2019s sale plans can go ahead.<\/p>\n

Former Melbourne Stars president Eddie McGuire and his former deputy John Wylie had both been outspoken critics of the move.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt face value, it\u2019s a strange and retrograde step in my view,\u201d Wylie had told this masthead. \u201cThere\u2019s 15 years worth of brand development that\u2019s gone into developing the Stars and the Renegades and the history of commercial sports franchises shows that these things have value.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo to blow that up and start again is an interesting move.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s axiomatic with foreign ownership that if that\u2019s the way the Renegades go, [it] would turn Melbourne into a one-team town. Look at the English Premier League \u2013 foreign ownership of Manchester City made the club more popular.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Stars\u2019 revival has been driven partly also by practicalities. It is now the judgment of CV and its BBL staff that there won\u2019t be sufficient time to make all the moves required to successfully rebrand the Stars in time for this year\u2019s WBBL and BBL competitions.<\/p>\n

Therefore, apparel orders to kit supplier New Balance will be for green Stars uniforms, rather than blue and white Rangers concepts, which were being worked on by designers up until Monday.<\/p>\n

\"AsAs CEO of Cricket Victoria, Nick Cummins is spearheading the state\u2019s plans to privatise one of its Big Bash League licences.Getty Images<\/p>\n

At the same time, the Renegades will continue to exist in something of a halfway house, under the caretaker stewardship of former Melbourne Stars general manager Max Abbott, plus a small staff.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday night, Stars and Renegades members received an identical email which read in part: \u201cDue to the extended timeline for a decision on BBL privatisation, we have made the decision not to go ahead with our vision of a re-branded team for the upcoming season.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to acknowledge the passion, loyalty and pride you have shown in this club and we look forward to seeing you at a game this summer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Editor’s pick\"Mike<\/a><\/p>\n

Former Stars, Sydney Sixers, Victoria and NSW coach Greg Shipperd has been mooted as one possible coach of the Renegades this season, with Stars coach Peter Moores likely to stay with that team as a senior assistant to Cameron White, who coached the Renegades last summer.<\/p>\n

Cummins outlined the three scenarios for the Renegades.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne is that a buyer comes in and they want to change the name, and we do that before the start of the season,\u201d he said. \u201cI think the longer this goes on, the less likely that is to happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe second one is that the buyer comes in and wants to run the team but says we\u2019ll do the full brand change next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe third is the buyer comes in and says, \u2018Yep, we\u2019re all good, but we\u2019ll take over the team on the first of February\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo all three of those options are in play, and we won\u2019t know which one it\u2019s going to be until we\u2019re a lot deeper into the sale process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cummins had voluntarily withdrawn from the meeting of state chairs with CA chair Mike Baird after CV initially planned to send him in the place of the state\u2019s chair Ross Hepburn, who is overseas.<\/p>\n

CV was represented on Monday by board director Shaun Richardson, who is an executive at National Australia Bank. Cummins said everything he had done regarding the sale of the Renegades had been with the full knowledge and assent of his board and in close consultation with CA, rejecting any notion that he had gone \u201crogue\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything I do as a representative of Cricket Victoria and the board,\u201d he said. \u201cAll I\u2019ve done is deliver the board\u2019s strategy.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot only have I been working with the board on this for 18 months, but also working with Cricket Australia and the other states.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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\"DanielDaniel Brettig<\/a> is The Age’s chief cricket writer and the author of several books on cricket.Connect via X<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":739889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-739888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=739888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/739889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=739888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=739888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=739888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}