Whateley in a Snapshot | Wednesday (03.06.26)
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm Gerard Waitley.
What is the snapshot overview for June 3?
Here's a snapshot of Wednesday, June 3. Cricket Victoria CEO Nick Cummins on the decision to abolish the Stars and Renegades.
We've thought about this very deeply in the context of BBL's sale, which has been widely reported over the last few months.
Why did Cricket Victoria decide to abolish the Stars and Renegades?
Cricket Victoria has decided to sell 100%. of one of the teams, we're cognizant of the fact that when that team is sold, their name is likely to be changed. So if we use the Renegades as an example, the Renegades would change their name to another team. We were concerned that the Renegades fans in this instance then may not support the new team, but then also because they'd spent the last 15 years hating the Stars, wouldn't support the Stars. So what we felt would be most appropriate is to go back to where we were when the Big Bash first started, which is that we had a Victorian team, a team that played in the blue and white and represent all the Victorians. So that's our 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 big V, plays there, would still be called Melbourne.
It's a city-based team, but ultimately a team that all Victorians connected to Victorian cricket can get behind.
Do you have the right to close these teams and to make these choices without public or member consultation?
Yeah, we do. And I mean, critically, we have consulted members, not all members, but we ran extensive focus groups back in February, January, February around this about, OK, if we sold a team, would you support the other team? All fans said no, they wouldn't. would you support a team that was a Victorian team? And fans said, yes, they would. And so we have consulted broadly because we came up with some theories, but we really needed to talk directly to members. So we spoke to Stars and Renegades members. We also spoke to Melbourne or Victorian-based fans of the Big Bash who don't actually support a team either way. They like the Big Bash. They go to Big Bash games, but they don't have a team. And all three groups said that they... Well, certainly the Stars and Renegades fans said they would not support the other team, but they would support a team that played under a sort of Victorian banner.
And Cummins made the case for privatisation in the BBL.
From Cricket Victoria's perspective, it's been well publicised the challenges that Cricket Australia have had financially. A lot of that is debt that they incurred during COVID that's been hard to unwind through the vagaries of the international calendar. So we believe... that this reset is required in order to ensure that Australian cricket is on strong financial footing. If we don't do that, then we suffer or we'll face the prospect of quite significant funding cuts, which then endangers the things that we regard as being important. So that's specifically being community cricket, but also our high-performance program. We want to protect those things. We want to ensure that they're strong for the next 100 years.
So we think that that is really, really important and why we are supportive of privatisation. The second part is the reality is there's enormous pressure on us to keep our players playing in Australia when there are other tournaments being played at the same time, the SAT20 being the most obvious, ILT20 recently, although it has moved into November.
What concerns did Cricket Victoria have about team name changes?
So we need to ensure that we are competitive in terms of our salary cap compared to those other leagues. Otherwise, players will either go and play in those other leagues or there's a possibility that they don't play at all, that in fact they earn enough money throughout the rest of the year that they may actually spend Christmas time just sitting on the couch playing watching the tests and having a break with the family. That's real. There are lots of examples I can give where we're seeing that tension come through. So to reiterate, it's about ensuring that the financial position of Australian cricket is strong well into the future, but also to ensure that the Big Bash is competitive globally.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:01
2
What is the snapshot overview for June 3?
0:01–0:18
3
Why did Cricket Victoria decide to abolish the Stars and Renegades?
0:18–3:18
4
What concerns did Cricket Victoria have about team name changes?
3:18–6:18
5
How did fan consultations influence team decisions?
6:18–10:12
Speakers
5 identifiedMore from Whateley
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