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Standing in the middle of the MCG, Steve Waugh was asked whether he would like to see the stands packed for an Indian Premier League game at the ground.
His response started out with a helping of scepticism, before Waugh started to imagine the sight in his mind’s eye.
“That might be a bit of a stretch, but it’d be good to see it,” he said. “I’m not sure they’d let a game come to Australia, but that would be amazing to see a game here played at the MCG in front of 100,000 people, that would be exciting. So good idea.”
That moment was an apt summation of what had already happened at the MCG on Friday morning. There had been even greater scepticism, from within cricket and also among the public, about the idea of a BBL game being played in India.
Yet here were prime ministers Anthony Albanese and Narendra Modi announcing that very thing, between the Melbourne Renegades and Perth Scorchers on December 12, while at the same time making clear this would be no one-off. “G’day Namaste” in Chennai in December will be an annual event, where business, culture and government revolve around cricket.
It will also work in parallel with a deepening sports relationship between the countries.
So how did the adventure begin?
Cricketers have long forged a path to India, as Waugh referenced in terms of the callow group Allan Border led to Chennai for the Tied Test in 1986.
“It was a bit of an unknown when we first went to India,” said Waugh.
“There wasn’t many touring sides before us, we were a bit apprehensive and probably had a bit of a siege mentality, we didn’t understand the culture.
“The players do a lot better now because they’re playing IPL and understand the people and the way it works. There’s great opportunities financially for the players. India is a hub for world cricket really.”
But while players have been consistent visitors, businesspeople and sport administrators have tended to be more transactional. In the words of Richard Ostroff, Cricket Australia’s head of international growth:
“It’s vital to be on the ground regularly to build relationships and establish trust. It’s a common observation over there that western business leaders look at India’s rapid growth and assume they can FIFO once or twice and get a big deal done.
“The reality is that you must commit for the long term. The only thing that matters is relationships.”
Ostroff was commissioned by CA to make India a greater priority in late 2023, not long after the governing body had signed a seven-year, $360 million rights deal with what is now JioStar.
Speaking regularly with sponsors and broadcasters in India, Ostroff also opened up dialogue with Australian high commissioner Philip Green, and the Centre for Australia-India Relations, for which Waugh serves on the board.
They held numerous season and series launch events in India, calling in the likes of Anil Kumble, Matthew Hayden, Waugh, Harbhajan Singh and Sunil Gavaskar to provide insights and entertainment. On one occasion, in Mumbai, Waugh and Hayden were even pitted against Kumble and Robin Uthappa in a “MasterChef” contest.
Green was an advocate for a “G’day USA”-style series of events to link the countries together, but wanted cricket as the major hook. At the same time, CA’s new chair, former NSW Premier Mike Baird, was building trust and rapport with BCCI secretary and soon to be ICC chair Jay Shah, the son of Modi’s right-hand man Amit Shah.
In India the former head of sports for JioStar, Sanjog Gupta, was another champion of the relationship, instrumental in growing Indian audiences for Australian cricket by providing commentary streams in many multiples of local languages beyond Hindi.
Those moves have grown the Indian audience not only for international cricket - to the point that the 2024-25 Border-Gavaskar bout was the most watched away Test series in history in India, and the second most watched Test series of all time in India, home or away. The BBL has experienced similar growth.
In Melbourne in March last year Gupta met with incoming CA chief executive Todd Greenberg on the sidelines of the SportNxt conference, and shared his view that CA should further grow the brand of the BBL in India - perhaps by playing a game there. Gupta and Ostroff discussed the idea further in May.
This was delicate territory. As shown by their steadfast refusal to allow Indian players to take part in overseas T20 leagues, the BCCI and IPL have always been strident protectors of their own market.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, CA’s first entreaty to the IPL governing council was met with little enthusiasm. In the past, that may have been the end of the story. But Baird, Greenberg and Ostroff persisted.
The turning point came in October last year, when Greenberg and Baird met with Shah and Gupta, by now chair and chief executive of the ICC, and BCCI secretary Devajit Sakaia. In essence, Shah agreed to push for the concept within India, ensuring BCCI and government support.
From there it was a case of settling on Chennai as a venue, due to its knowledgeable cricket supporter base and recently rebuilt stadium, which also has a storied history: 1986, Dean Jones and all that.
By the time the story of the bid for an India BBL game broke in February, Baird and Greenberg were privately comfortable that this was no longer a possibility, but a reality. Importantly, there was still to be an in-person meeting and a handshake to confirm it all.
That relational attitude, rather than a transactional one, was summed up by how, on one of their many recent trips to India, Ostroff and Greenberg found themselves not only dining with the owner of a key sponsor, but also his family. For looking at India through that relational lens, they both give credit to Baird.
“The role of CA chair is considered by most of our stakeholders in Australia as a domestic focus on the members,” Greenberg said. “But the reality is the role has a significant and critical global relations focus.
“Through his entire term as CA chair, Mike has developed a very trusted relationship with BCCI and their leadership. That trust has enabled me and the team to build this discussion into a reality.”
With that in mind, an IPL game at the MCG starts to look less like a pipedream, and more like a genuine prospect.
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