'Unfinished business': The curse of the Melbourne Stars

"Come finals time next year, you wait, it's going to happen again."

Marcus Stoinis is sitting at the kitchen table of his family's house in Perth, grateful for the unusually long period he has had at home with his mum and sister. It's August, 2020, with the cricket world emerging from its pandemic-enforced slumber. Stoinis, recalled to the Australian squad for the forthcoming tour of England, had been considering the unknown of the weeks and months ahead in a generously long Zoom interview.

But when conversation turns to the Big Bash, Stoinis sees the question coming at him from the other side of the country as clearly as one of the countless deliveries he bludgeoned during his dominant T20 campaign the previous summer.

Amid all the world's uncertainty, the BBL's one inevitability is that the Melbourne Stars yet again have unfinished business.

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There likely is not another person who has bought into the Melbourne Stars culture as heavily as David Hussey. So the former batsman sees the irony in that despite spending nearly 10 years at the same BBL team in a playing and coaching capacity, he actually hated the idea of it even existing in the first place.

"I want it on the record that I was actually against the BBL being brought in," Hussey told cricket.com.au. "I liked the Victoria versus NSW, Victoria versus Tasmania games, playing at the MCG. I really enjoyed the state-versus-state rivalry."

Indeed, splitting up a Victorian team that had won four domestic T20 titles in the six years of the old state-based competition was unpopular with many of the two new Melbourne clubs' players and coaches. Even so, when Cricket Australia introduced the 'KFC Big Bash League' back in 2011, both the Melbourne Stars and Melbourne Renegades made a decent fist of turning the façades of the characteristics assigned to them into genuine identities.

The Stars in particular embraced their tag as Melbourne's glamour club. Victorian royalty Shane Warne was their marquee man, with his T20 credentials boosted having led the Rajasthan Royals to the first Indian Premier League title a few years earlier. The state's most recognisable players – stalwarts Hussey and Cameron White, and Test quicks Peter Siddle and James Pattinson – joined him alongside prized interstate recruits like James Faulkner, George Bailey and Adam Voges. Glenn Maxwell and Brad Hodge switched from the Renegades after just one season.

Foundation coach Greg Shipperd made no secret of the fact that the club sought overseas players that would not only help them win games but also help sell tickets, a philosophy Hussey also looked to follow when he took over as coach in 2019.

"We considered ourselves, along with the Sydney Sixers, one of the flagship teams, in terms of history of the grounds we played at, what the personalities were like," said Shipperd, who led the club for four seasons before being ousted and taking up the Sixers job in 2015.

"The media gravitated to all those people, and the rest of us played our roles around that."

Club chairman Eddie McGuire, perhaps Melbourne's highest profile – and most divisive – sporting administrator, made it clear to players that the Big Bash would not be a holiday.

"We want to win, we want to get the best crowds in, we want to win financially, we want to win spiritually, we want to win with facilities, we want this to be one of the best cricket clubs in the world from day one," The Age reported him as saying in an early missive.

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The appointment of the likes of Sir Viv Richards, Ian Chappell and McGuire in off-field roles further reinforced the Stars' early status as the BBL's blue-chip side. Warne, whose two seasons came at the height of his high-profile relationship with actor Liz Hurley, organised VIP parties at his Crown Casino nightclub and had players and their families over to his house.

"Shane Warne equalled success," said batsman Rob Quiney. "That's what you see with him and that's what he wanted to bring in. He wasn't going to sign up and play with the bottom team."

Handing Warne the keys to a brand-new cricket team in his hometown was a bit like letting a firework off in your living room; it was entertaining, a little frightening and there was a bit of a mess to clean up at the end of it. Just days out from the club's inaugural game, he burnt his hand making a ham-and-cheese toasted sandwich which nearly saw him miss the game. Days later, he memorably predicted how he was going to get Brendon McCullum out while mic'd up on live television.

"To see him still be able to perform at the level he did and the interactions he had with the commentators, whilst playing, blossomed into how normal that sort of thing seems now," said Shipperd.

"He was able to pull off some magical moments in terms of giving the viewers his thinking on how to get a batter out and being able to deliver it. Those moments are golden."

Warne's ugly run-in with his nemesis Marlon Samuels somewhat overshadowed the Stars' following season. Quiney believes that was the moment when a "proper rivalry" began with the Renegades. Shipperd takes a dimmer view of the incident, but suggested it underlined the intensity of a format many traditionalists had brushed off as hit and giggle.

"It just showed how competitive the environment was," he said. "For those who might have thought T20 was a bit of a circus and the players just turned up, put their hand out and got a pay cheque – they saw it was dead serious cricket."

Most significantly for the Stars, an exceptionalism that still permeates the team today was born out of those initial years. Over the coming summers, they were the team that signed bigger names than anyone else – Warne, Maxwell, Kevin Pietersen, Lasith Malinga and Dale Steyn have all featured, while they even recruited then Test captain Michael Clarke in 2015 before he later pulled out of the deal. They were the team that lured over 80,000 people to a domestic game of cricket in 2015. They were the team that had heavy hitters like McGuire, John Wylie and David Evans on its board (before a 2019 Cricket Victoria restructure saw the Melbourne clubs' independent boards dissolved).

They were the team that, ahead of BBL|09, had won more games than any other.

"I remember talking to friends from other teams and they were always just envious of the Melbourne Stars," says Hussey. "There was a lot of envy of the networks we were a part of."

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Ask Hussey about his time with the Melbourne Stars and there are two emotions that colour his usually upbeat demeanour. The first is pride. It means a lot to Hussey that he only played for one club, so much so that he accepted less money than what he thought he may have been worth elsewhere, and that he was part of a club that has not only been ambitious, but even a little brash. When Hussey was overseas in 2011 and was tossing up offers from the Stars and Renegades, it was the lure of playing at the MCG that saw him choose green.

"When the BBL came about and we realised there were going to be two teams in Melbourne, it was going to be one of those two teams I was going to play for," he said. "It was a really tough decision to make but the gravitational pull towards playing at the MCG … It was too good to pass up."

Gravitational pull. How many other Australian cricketers would suggest their home ground can alter physics? 

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The other emotion that pervades Hussey's memories? Guilt.

The Stars' first of four consecutive semi-final defeats way back in BBL|01 is closing in on being a decade ago, but Hussey still remembers how he felt when he was sensationally caught behind by Perth Scorchers wicketkeeper Luke Ronchi and the WACA Ground closed in around him like a nightmare. The Stars lost by 11 runs.

"I just remember feeling so responsible for us losing, we only needed nine an over and I got out first ball," said Hussey. "One of the big sins in T20 cricket is to lose two wickets in the same over.

"I just remember thinking, 'I cost us that game of cricket'. I was devastated."

In the coming years his sense of culpability only intensified. The Stars attained trump cards in Malinga, the Sri Lankan wonder-slinger who confounded opposition batters in his two seasons with the club, and South African-turned-English maverick Kevin Pietersen.

Yet still they came up short. Hussey floundered in making 24 from 22 balls in their BBL|03 semi-final defeat to the Hobart Hurricanes, while another semi-final capitulation to the Scorchers followed in BBL|04. The next summer, the Stars made their maiden BBL decider in Hussey's first season as skipper but lost to a Sydney Thunder side led by his brother Mike.

As coach, David Hussey has experienced a different kind of pain. The Stars lost last summer's final to the Sixers but it was in fact their defeat to the same team the week before in a 'Qualifier' final that he looks back on with regret. After they had lost early wickets in pursuit of a modest 142, captain Glenn Maxwell thought they could get a head-start on the chase by elevating Nathan Coulter-Nile, their big-hitting lower-order allrounder, up the order. Hussey rebuffed him. The Sixers won comfortably. Although the Stars won their second-chance match and met the Sixers in the final, they lost home ground advantage. Hussey now believes he should have listened to Maxwell.

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"Glenn wanted to put in a pinch-hitter early to maximise the Power Play overs, fully aware the pitch was going to slow up and be harder to face later on," said Hussey.

"That was a big decision that I completely got wrong. I should have listened to the captain. You'd love hindsight to make those decisions again."

After they succumbed once again in the decider, the Stars had in nine seasons played in 12 finals (all but one being knockout matches) and lost nine of them. Three of them were grand finals. This from the team that has won nearly 60 per cent of its regular-season matches, a better mark than any other side. It begs the question: how could a team that has been so dominant, that has such strong confidence its own internal practices, have been so poor when it counted?

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Cameron White, captain of the Stars for 27 games through the first four seasons, looks back on the BBL|02 semi-final at the WACA against the Scorchers as the one that got away.

Back then the semi-finals doubled as a playoff for the lucrative Champions League tournament and the Stars might as well have been booking their tickets to India when the Scorchers' required run-rate hovered just under 13 with eight overs left in a rain-reduced game. Who exactly made the match-turning decision then to throw the ball to 20-year-old allrounder Alex Keath, on debut and who in a few years' time would be playing professional Australian rules football instead of cricket, instead of arguably the game's greatest ever bowler in Warne remains a source of some sheepishness. Warne was the one calling the shots but the fact both he and regular stand-in skipper White were just one over-rate offence away from a one-game ban meant James Faulkner had been listed as captain on the Stars team sheet. 

Shipperd labelled it succinctly as, "innovative thinking, which was pulled into line, maybe fairly, and not to be done again." Cricket Australia took a dimmer view, later fining Warne $5,000.

Keath's over went for 26. The Stars might have gotten away with it if not for another leadership blunder on what should have been the final ball of the match. What had been a terrific final over from Faulkner was capped off by a blockhole wide yorker on the final ball with the Scorchers needing three to win. Only it was a no-ball.

"I looked around and I thought, "I think we've only got three (fielders) in the circle,'" said Quiney, referring to the 30-yard inner-ring which required at least four fielders inside it. "I started to run in, but it was way too late. I don't know who wasn't meant to be on the boundary.

"The game had gone from, 'Unless Faulkner bowls a really bad ball, we're going to win this' to being, 'Nup, we're done'."

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That it was Warne protesting the no-ball call to umpires revealed who was really in charge. It was an odd way for the champion spinner to bow out; in his final professional match, Warne did not bowl a ball. More broadly, it stands out as one of the Stars' more confounding finals mis-steps.

"We were feeling pretty flat knowing we'd stuffed it right up, and it wasn't the first time," said White. "I don't think we ever got to the bottom of who was meant to be up and who was meant to be on the boundary."

For Quiney, he too saw it as a watershed moment.

"If we win that," he says, "we're not having this conversation today."

Stephen Fleming, the former New Zealand captain who took over as coach from Shipperd before BBL|05, did speak about the Stars' consistent shortcomings in finals in a team meeting at the beginning of BBL|07. Quiney recalled it being a much-needed address.

"He made a big point of it," he recalled. "It's good not to change anything but we kept falling over in the finals. If you keep doing the same thing, you keep getting the same results.

"He identified that we needed to do something different in the finals, whether it was our thought process or whatever it was."

Ironically, Fleming's address came at the outset of the only season during which they missed the finals altogether and finished bottom of the table.

"It was like we were already in the finals," continued Quiney. "We won two games for the season.

"I thought (the address) was a ripping idea, but I thought we just needed to get to the finals first and then have that presentation leading into the finals. Because there's no point trying to hide away from that fact."

Shipperd doesn't recall addressing it in the same way. Indeed, he insists the current players should not have to own the mistakes of their predecessors. In a similar vein, White suggests players did not dwell on their poor record in the big matches during his four seasons with the club. But the fact those two integral leaders of the team in its early days would be celebrating Stars defeats in consecutive seasons – White was part of the Renegades side that knocked over the Stars in BBL|08, Shipperd coached the Sixers team that beat them in the BBL|09 final – only adds to the pain for those who have stayed the course. 

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Stoinis stood in the pouring rain at the SCG, his golden cap soaking wet, managing a half-hearted smile as he accepted his trophy for being named Player of BBL|09. The trophy he and his teammates craved had moments earlier been presented to the Sydney Sixers. A year before that he had been the first domino to fall in the now infamous stumble to Renegades. If the back-to-back seasons had been portrayed in a Hollywood film, Sydney's epic February downpour that had held off just long enough to get a shortened game in would have been the cleansing shower of triumph. In reality, it was a teary symbol of another failure.

As much as it hurts, Stoinis can see the bigger picture. The club's former captain, Warne, is now prone to labelling them chokers. Stoinis actually thinks it's good for the league.

"I love the attention. I understand it's a necessary attention for the game and for the Big Bash as a competition," says Stoinis.

"Leading into the finals it gets more people watching, purely because (they want to know), 'Is this the year they do win? Or don't win? Are they going to do this again?'

"It's a great thing for the game and the competition. If I see Warnie after he's just called us chokers – it's not because he doesn't like me, that's just the role of the media."

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The club refuses to deviate from their core principles. Nor from their self-confidence.

"Questions are going to be asked every year – 'you make the finals but you choke' or 'you haven't brought home the bacon yet' – but I truly believe that what we have internally is so strong, that people can say whatever they like and we'll still go out and perform," said Hussey.

"If it comes off and we win that's fantastic but if we finish second again, well we're going to keep working our butts off to get better next year because I truly believe, and most of the players believe this too, that once we win one, it's going to be a little dynasty like the New England Patriots or a team like that."

Stoinis is even more bullish.

"I'd love to turn that narrative around into us winning the next five (titles) in a row," he said. "That might sound silly, but I'd rather be in the big dance than not be in the big dance.

"There's definitely some unfinished business there."