For sale: one Mace (slightly used)

GH on the setting of the Stars

Not fifteen seasons, but the same season fifteen times

On 2 January 2016, Melbourne Stars met the Melbourne Renegades at the Melbourne Cricket Ground for a Melbourne milestone: more than 80,000 people composed the biggest attendance at the domestic cricket match in Australian history. It happened that rain was falling in copious quantities in Sydney, drowning the Test match. Never had T20 cricket’s lustre in Australia seemed greater, relative to Test cricket’s fading grandeur.

But as Einstein counselled, it’s seldom wise to make predictions, especially about the future. A decade on and what became known as the Melbourne Derby, which still drew nearly 70,000 last season, is no more: the clubs are to merge, lose their identities, and permanently sheath their mace. Kudos to friend of Et Al Tom Morris, who broke the story on SEN yesterday afternoon.

It’s even hinted that the merged entity might revert to the name Bushrangers, in which case the clock will truly have turned back: that was the name the Victorian Sheffield Shield team took between 1995, when branding seemed outre, and 2018. David Emerson, then the marketing manager at the Victorian Cricket Association, should charge a royalty for his old idea.