When Todd Greenberg moves down to Melbourne to take over as Cricket Australia’s new chief executive in the new year, one of his first calls may well be to AFL boss Andrew Dillon about last night’s Marvel Stadium fiasco.
Players and coaches on both sides of the Big Bash League fixture wondered whether a football game would have been permitted to be played on the patchy outfield, and it was hard to blame them.
The outfield at Marvel Stadium on Monday night for the Big Bash match between the Renegades and Scorchers.Credit: AAP
The stadium is owned and managed by the AFL and is a multipurpose venue; Pearl Jam concerts headlined a raft of events to have fallen between AFL and BBL seasons.
An annual RMIT university graduation was also held at Marvel Stadium last Wednesday, before Monday’s match.
Newly appointed Cricket Australia CEO Todd Greenberg.Credit: Getty Images for Cricket Australia
Amid the many hot takes aired during and after the game, it was clear that commentators were struggling to know where to apportion blame for conditions that Lisa Sthalekar called an “absolute joke” and “embarrassing to have a professional T20 competition even on it”.
Renegades captain Will Sutherland, once a draft target for AFL clubs, admitted that his side had discussed a “no diving” rule due to the nature of the surface, the sort of thinking once reserved for bone-dry subcontinental cricket grounds and anathema to the athletic nature of Twenty20 cricket.
On Tuesday, BBL boss Alistair Dobson told SEN he was “disappointed”, conceding the ground was “presented poorly”.
The evening’s spectacle was not helped by a changeable drop-in pitch that seamed around lavishly early on before flattening out into a strip that allowed the hosts to cruise to victory over the Perth Scorchers.
Cricket Australia and the AFL were in communication either side of the game. The AFL was contacted for comment.
Cricket Australia said of the conditions: “The league and clubs work closely with all venues to ensure they meet all required standards, including outfields. There are many tenants and events at Marvel Stadium, with extensive foot traffic over the outfield in the period immediately prior to the BBL.
“As is standard procedure, match officials inspected the venue on Sunday. While there are bare patches on the outfield, it was deemed safe for play. Both teams also trained at the venue on Sunday. We anticipate the outfield will continue to improve ahead of the remaining BBL14 matches at the venue.”
Cricket has had a long and chequered history at the stadium in Melbourne’s Docklands, dating back to a series of games between Australia and South Africa under the retractable roof in 2000.
But its ownership by the AFL and a business model leaning heavily on the staging of concerts and other major events at the venue means that cricket currently sits a distant third on the stadium’s list of priorities. That is a problem for Cricket Australia, because cricket needs two BBL venues in Melbourne.
For Greenberg, there will be an imperative to build up cricket’s relationship with the AFL. That will have to come through commanding respect as much as offering conciliatory words.
It is true that in recent times, footy and cricket have had a number of episodes where one has aided the other. The most recent deal signed between the AFL and cricket over use of the MCG gave football more year-on-year access early in the season, unless cricket had a major event to play: World Cup finals in March, or the 2027 150th anniversary Test match between Australia and England.
And the two sports have also aligned over the need for the Queensland government to find a better solution for an oval stadium in Brisbane, between the decline of the Gabba and the fast-approaching 2032 Olympics.
Nevertheless, the AFL’s surge well ahead of other sports in terms of match and broadcast revenue has at times been accompanied by a sense that the league likes to think of itself as the only game in town, or in the country.
That can be an easier viewpoint to hold when operating without the kinds of international pressures that are ever present in cricket. Dillon’s predecessor Gillon McLachlan was seen as a gifted chief executive and negotiator, but even he may have struggled with relations between India and Pakistan, or Taliban control of Afghanistan.
Aside from Marvel, the scheduling clash of AFLW against the WBBL is another obvious area for Greenberg to address with Dillon. Growing women’s sport should be a matter of collaboration rather than code wars.
Ultimately, cricket and the AFL should have a mutually beneficial alliance. Their histories are deeply intertwined, and they share common venue needs that should allow – as is the case at Adelaide Oval or the MCG – for providing a quality stage on which the best players can perform in either sport.
Mottled Marvel was anything but that on Monday night; Greenberg should expect better.
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