Melbourne Stars looking at another failed BBL season
A franchise once billed as Australia’s answer to the LA Lakers is facing another failed BBL season. Here’s how the Melbourne Stars unravelled – and where they go from here.
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They were built to be the BBL’s answer to the LA Lakers, Manchester United and even the Harlem Globetrotters.
Stars by name and stars by nature.
But after 13-and-a-half summers of the Big Bash League, the Melbourne Stars are one of only two franchises – the other being the Hobart Hurricanes – yet to win a title.
There have been near misses.
Five semi-final losses in the first six seasons. Losses in the final in BBL05, BBL08 and BBL09.
Alarmingly, since that rain-marred loss to Sydney Sixers in the BBL09 decider, the Stars have gone from perennial contenders to cellar dwellers.
They have lost 22 of their past 29 BBL matches and their finals hopes in BBL14 were all but dashed before the New Year when they crashed to a 0-5 record.
Rob Quiney, who played 39 times for the franchise, says watching the Stars’ decline in recent years had been tough.
“You see people who have been at the Stars from nearly day dot and you want them to win for their sake,” Quiney said.
“(Marcus Stoinis) and (Glenn Maxwell) … you see guys like that and you go, ‘Jeez, I would like them to have some success with the Stars after being involved for so long and giving so much.”
Earlier this summer, Stoinis conceded: “Us not winning in the years that we were in finals or around the finals and super competitive every year, we might have gotten too obsessed with the fact we weren’t winning the title and we forgot how much we were doing well.
“To be probably the most successful club in that first period of the Big Bash, even though we didn’t win it, I think we probably tried to change too much reflecting on that, in the chase of a title.”
Sydney Sixers and Perth Scorchers have taken the mantle of the BBL’s powerhouse clubs, claiming four of the last five titles and boasting winning percentages of 68 per cent (Scorchers) and 66 per cent (Sixers) since the start of BBL12.
Those are numbers the Stars, led by some of the best T20 players in the world including Maxwell, Stoinis and Ben Duckett, can only dream of.
“There were times at the start where a lot of sides were happy to see us lose just because of that competitiveness and potentially how we were portrayed,” Quiney said.
“I’m sure they have got the right people involved and all that sort of stuff but just haven’t had that knack of winning games at the moment.
“Let’s say if we beat the Renegades in that final and the Sixers in that final, we’re probably talking different turkey.”
Which prompts the question, where has it gone so wrong?
Quiney says losing can become like “quicksand”.
“The harder you try the less results you get, or you don’t get those results,” he said.
He said he was confident experienced mentor Peter Moores, the former England coach who took charge of the Stars in 2023, was the right man to lead the club out of the mire.
THE STOINIS QUESTION
When the Stars were contending, current skipper Marcus Stoinis was a dominant force at the top of the order.
Stoinis smashed BBL records to lead the Stars to the BBL08 and BBL09 finals, averaging better than 50 in both campaigns and amassing a combined 1238 runs.
After a more modest return in BBL10, Stoinis shuffled into the middle-order midway through the 2021-22 tournament with Tom Rogers, Joe Clarke and Sam Harper among the options preferred as opener.
“I would love to see Stoin open the batting again,” Quiney said.
“I know that he plays most of his T20 cricket and does really well internationally now at five, six, seven.
“But I would love for him to go open the batting, take as long or as short as he wants, chest out and dominate a game.”
Stoinis contributed 529 runs from BBL11-13 batting predominantly in the middle-order, which has been his role in international cricket.
“That’s a dance between batting in the position where you play for Australia, if he bats down the order, whereas he made all his runs for the Stars batting at the top of the order and was winning games,” Australian great and BBL-winning captain Mike Hussey said.
THE ‘GROUND ZERO’ REBUILD
Hussey left Perth Scorchers to join Sydney Thunder with the franchise “below ground zero”.
The Thunder had finished rock bottom in the first two seasons of the BBL, going winless in BBL02 after a 2-5 finish in BBL01.
The Stars are by no means at ground zero.
But they could do a lot worse than learn from the lessons of Sydney Thunder’s rise from easybeats to BBL05 champions.
“We had to get a lot of things sorted out and there was a whole team of people doing it,” Hussey said.
“We did have a good, hard deep dive into the list and we tried to build a lot more depth.
“We were able to bring in some players on unders as well. For example Andre Russell, way unders, Shane Watson, way unders, Jacques Kallis came for a reasonable salary. That helps.
“If you can get world-class players and you can get them at a decent rate, that means you can get some other really good players.
“We were able to buy Clint McKay. We were able to get Fawad Ahmed away from wherever they were playing.
“That really worked in our favour to be able to build a lot of depth a good squad mentality.”
The irony is that three years after propping up the table, Hussey’s Thunder denied Melbourne Stars in an epic MCG decider.
“The list needs to be looked at really forensically and strengthened in all areas,” Hussey said.
“Sometimes that means sacrifices need to be made. I know with the Scorchers, for example, players are paid unders what they could probably get at other teams.
“There’s players at the Sixers, I think of Hayden Kerr, I know there’s been other teams that have made strong inquiries about him.
“He’s happy to play for the Sixers to play for less than what he could get at another team.
“But you need to create the culture for players to want to do that.”
SCARS OF BBL08 AND BBL09?
Maxwell and Stoinis are the only survivors from the painful defeats of BBL08 and BBL09.
The BBL08 decider, played against cross-town rival Melbourne Renegades, went down as one of the greatest chokes in Australian sport history.
The Stars were 0-93 needing 53 from 43 balls to clinch their drought-breaking title.
It was as close to a fait accompli as you could get.
Then Cameron Boyce flipped the script.
Boyce bowled Stoinis, had Ben Dunk caught in his next over and when Maxwell fell for 1 the next ball, the Stars were 4-99 with 47 runs still needed.
The final collapse was 7-19 and a golden opportunity to vanquish the title drought had been squandered.
“I have never seen that in any form of the game,” former Stars captain Shane Warne said in commentary.
The following season Sydney’s fickle summer weather – and Josh Philippe’s brilliance – cost the Stars.
In a match reduced to 12 overs a side, the Stars fell 19 runs short chasing 117 for victory.
The Stars have not played finals since, finishing no higher than sixth in the past four seasons.
WHERE TO NOW?
Clint McKay, the former Stars quick turned high performance manager, summed up the mood after the club slumped to 0-5 after an 18-run loss to Sydney Thunder on Saturday.
“It’s devastating. The boys are hurting. The coaching staff’s hurting. Everyone is hurting at the moment. Zip and five is definitely not where we want to be,” he said.
“The boys are working as hard as ever, there’s no doubt about that. They’re devastated at the moment … this season at the moment it’s not acceptable – we know that.”
The Stars mathematically remain in the hunt for BBL14 finals, but would need to win their last five matches and have other results fall in their favour.
The core group is as talented as any – Maxwell, Stoinis, Duckett, Beau Webster, Hilton Cartwright, Tom Curran and Usama Mir.
Veteran quick Peter Siddle plans to retire at the end of the summer and the onus will be on the backroom staff to fill a glaring need for a world-class death bowler.
In the past five seasons, the Scorchers, Sixers and Heat have built their success on having the competition’s best bowling attacks.
The Heat had six bowlers take 10 wickets or more in BBL13. The Stars’ leading wicket-taker was Maxwell with seven.
The Scorchers won BBL11 and BBL12 with seven bowlers taking 15 or more wickets across those two seasons.
The Sixers had six players in the 15-plus bracket when they triumphed in BBL09 and BBL10.
Over those four tournaments, Stars bowlers achieved that feat eight times – two of which were Adam Zampa, who now plays for the Renegades.
What they would give for a weapon such as Jhye Richardson, Ben Dwarshuis or Spencer Johnson that this season’s title contenders boast.
Should Curran live up to his billing in the second season of his Stars deal, it would go some way to solving that issue.
But the Englishman alone can’t alleviate what has been a glaring problem for several years.
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