The Big Bash League is officially a thing. The people of Melbourne and the MCG made it so on Saturday night when 80,883 squashed into the grand old ground for the Stars-Renegades derby, astonishing even organisers and overwhelming security protocols. Many thousands were caught in queues snaking around Yarra Park, waiting for bag searches and body scans. As per long history of MCG crowds, their humour held. To accommodate the swarm, the MCC at length had to open the members' reserve to all comers and remove a promotional banner that initially had covered one bank of seats.

Eighty thousand, eight hundred and eighty three. It is worth spelling out. It was almost certainly the biggest crowd for a domestic cricket match anytime, anywhere. It was bigger than this season's Boxing Day crowd, and for that matter last season's, too. It was bigger than any Collingwood-Carlton AFL game for the past two years, once the gold standard for derby-style matches in Melbourne. That must have left Eddie McGuire, president of both the Magpies and Stars, with mixed feelings. Then again, his teams won every time, winter and summer.

Sheer crowd size, special effects and gimcrackery were only the half of it. When former Stars captain Cameron White appeared for the Renegades, he was momentarily booed. This game has a history and a memory after all. When White was kept scoreless for a couple of deliveries, fans brandished placards extolling the virtue of the dot ball. This game's nuances are not lost on everybody. And even the ones that were, so what? I'm not sure how many of this night's crowd were up with the damage done by artful slower balls — it certainly got by the two lads who spent the night belting each other over the head with thundersticks — but the point about T20 now is that it appeals on a range of levels.