You wouldn’t have noticed me at the Gabba in Brisbane that night six days before Christmas, the fellow in the corner of the dugout by the pitch, decked in training gear and cap, notebook in hand. A stats man perhaps, or part of the coaching staff.

For the past 10 days, since they gathered for the fifth Big Bash League, I had been with the Melbourne Renegades: watching, talking, listening. Actually, it was more than that: such was the level of access I was accorded, and the way I had been allowed into the team environment, I had been a Renegade. And this, their first match of the season, was the climax of the visit.

The idea to go to Melbourne was born from the debate on the merits of city-based Twenty20 cricket and beyond that, the future of the wider game. As a player and writer I have been involved in and around professional cricket for almost half a century and, like many, I have tradition ingrained in me. Test matches are a passion, the capacity for ebb and flow, and narrative unmatched in any sport in my opinion.

But the landscape is changing, has changed. T20 is still frowned on in many quarters as the bastard child of cricket, but it cannot be ignored, its rise influencing the way cricket is played, viewed, marketed, developed. At its outset, I certainly saw it as fun, but an adjunct: candyfloss cricket I called it, one bite, some sweetness and then … nothing. But then came the Indian Premier League, with its moneyed privately owned city franchises, and the riches they offered. A conflict of interest grew, with the top players understandably hankering after the financial rewards, for what is a few weeks’ work, so that IPL became a genuine threat to the integrity of the heavy schedule of international cricket. Other leagues have started – Big Bash, Caribbean Premier League, the RamSlam in South Africa – and where players were once tied by international commitments, a new category of itinerant cricketer emerged.

Clearly, something significant was happening in Australia, and I wanted to understand what it was that was bringing people in their thousands to games there, filling grounds with record crowds, or turning on their televisions by the million.

David Saker is the head coach of the Renegades. Since 2009, when he became England’s bowling coach, he and I have been friends. We talk the same robust language, think alike, enjoy the same ale and chat what he calls “cricket shit” over what are sometimes too many pints of it. Would it be possible, I asked him, to come there at the start and shadow your team, see at close quarters how it works, what it takes for a top-class T20 team to plan and play a match: to be embedded, as it were? He liked the idea, and so did Stuart Coventry, the Renegades CEO.

So there I was, in the dugout, and, as the Renegades’ West Indian all rounder Dwayne Bravo launched his last-ditch sixes that night, and Matthew Wade, the Australia T20 wicketkeeper-batsman, slashed and burned the winning runs; as the adrenalin levels of this seen-it-all sceptic went through the roof, I actually got what it was all about. It had been a mind-changing experience. The future of the game, and its expansion might not be down the path that many would like, but it is secure, of that I am certain now. It is others who will need convincing.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tom Cooper in the field during the practice match between the Melbourne Renegades and the Melbourne Stars. Photograph: Daniel Hartley-Allen/The Guardian

It is past 10 o’clock in the evening when we get back to the dressing rooms at the Gabba. Almost 28,000 people have left the concrete bowl of a ground, and made their chattering way home down Vulture Street and Stanley Street. They have just seen a pulsating finish, with the Renegades beating the Brisbane Heat by seven wickets with three balls of the game remaining. The evening has brought sixes and boundaries, clever bowling and stunning athleticism in the field. There has been noise and chanting; families with kids; flames and fireworks; a rocket-man mascot; and a partisan on the PA system who insisted the crowd“ Turn Up The Decibels”, and as a bowler turned to run in: “Let’s hope he gets Aaron Finch out this ball”. In the interval, a genuine rocket man, back-pack propelling him to the height of the Gabba’s top tiers, has jetted with ear-splitting noise from one side of the ground to the other. Welcome to BBL5.

The dressing rooms are deep in the bowels of the stadium, along labrynthine corridors that snake beneath the stands and in them the Renegades, in their scarlet uniforms, are on a chattering high. Like the Heat, this is the first match of eight they will play in seeking a place in the finals and it is the best possible start after eight days of training. The match had gone almost according to plan, the chase ultimately timed to perfection. There were runs for the captain Finch, also Australia’s T20 captain, a half-century for Cameron White, who this season had defected from the Renegades Melbourne rivals, the Stars, and six-hitting at either end of the innings from the mighty Chris Gayle and Bravo, their two Caribbean stars.

Beers are opened and music switched on. Some go for food from the canteen next door, others shower, pack gear, or just sit and chat about the game. In the middle of the room on a white board remain the messages and strategies from the final team meeting the previous afternoon.

It is 45 minutes before the coach calls the group together. Saker is in his first year in charge of a Big Bash team and also of the Victorian Bushrangers, the state side, having returned from England to his home in the Melbourne suburbs. He wipes the board clean: the sentiments there are no longer relevant.

The game, he thought, had gone well, their highest-ever successful run chase. They bowled to their plans: he compliments his opening bowler Chris Tremain, who had conceded just three runs from his first two overs and took a wicket; and the 20-year-old Nottingham-born rookie Guy Walker, whose bowling had been targeted and plundered but who had responded by ending each of his three overs well. There were two catching lapses, including one inexplicably simple chance to Finch, but the fielding was vibrant, and young Tom Beaton, from Western Australia, had taken a magnificent catch, making full-tilt ground round the boundary and diving full length. Saker praises the opening pairing of Finch and Gayle, potentially the most incendiary in the competition, noting how they had taken some sharp singles early on that the opposition would have found unexpected. Gayle is not known for sharp singles: Finch says he wasn’t anticipating them either.

The captain offers his own thoughts on the match. Finch is an excellent, instinctive leader, sometimes not knowing until they walk onto the field who will open the bowling (in a later match, against Hobart Hurricanes, he throws the ball to Tom Cooper, who was as taken aback as anyone but conceded just two runs from his single over of off-spin). Finch is pleased with the outcome and the strategies, particularly when coping with the shorter boundaries straight and to one side. It is after midnight by the time the team have all packed and left.

In his poem, The One-day Critic, the cricket writer RC Robertson-Glasgow talks of a spectator grumbling. “Where are the bowlers of my boyhood’s prime? Where are the batsmen of the pristine years?” Eventually the listener, bored, “turns to Larwood’s bounding run, and Woolley’s rapier flashing in the sun.” It has ever been thus: almost from its inception, cricket has been a game never as good as it was, and that persists. Through the ages, cricket followers have been suspicious of change, as if the game might disappear into a black hole. But decades have seen numerous alterations to the laws; pitches are covered and even artificially cultivated; there is one-day cricket; helmets and coloured clothing; a white and now pink ball; global competitions and T20 franchises; a whole sea-change in how the game is played.

Thirty years ago, Viv Richards’ 56-ball Test century seemed absurd: now the South African AB de Villiers has hit one in a one-day international from 31 balls. A few weeks back the New Zealand batsman Martin Guptill hit the fastest half-century for his country in a T20 match from 19 balls: the record lasted 20 minutes before Colin Munro improved it by five deliveries. In the Renegades’ final match against the Strikers, Gayle equalled Yuvraj Singh’s world record 12-ball 50.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Coach David Saker talks to his team before the practice match between the Melbourne Renegades and the Melbourne Stars in December. Photograph: Daniel Hartley-Allen/The Guardian

The game is not what it was? Well, no, it isn’t. Actually it is better, in all its forms. And if we can but see it, the opportunity is there not just to keep cricket struggling on, but to expand it, globally and massively so: not though unless the focus shifts. This year’s BBL has seen the Adelaide Oval full to 50,000 capacity for Strikers matches. In Melbourne, the two derby matches between Renegades and Stars saw a capacity 50,000 at the Renegades home, Etihad Stadium, and a week earlier, an astounding 81,000 at the giant Melbourne Cricket Ground, believed to be a record crowd for a domestic cricket match anywhere. These things cannot be ignored.

It is now my belief that while Test cricket should be preserved, as an important even niche part of the game’s heritage, expansion, which could be almost exponential, has to happen through T20. It is the form of the game to which the juniors, of both sexes, who turn up to BBL, aspire, and it is they, rather than the die-hard traditionalists, who are the future. The unexpected success already of the Women’s BBL, in its first season, also is a key to the game’s expansion: men’s cricket is unlikely to succeed in USA or China, two of the biggest untapped markets. But the success of the USA football team shows that women cricketers may just be able to do what their male counterparts have not. In Australia, I saw a vibrant game, already successful beyond their predictions, but it is only the start.

The Big Bash League was born out of the old state Big Bash competition and it is having a remarkable effect on the landscape of cricket in Australia. Crowds and television audience have increased dramatically even since BBL4, when, for example, the Renegades derby with the Stars, at the Etihad, attracted ‘only’ 35,000. Renegades has the largest membership of any of the eight teams, over 7,600, but it also illustrates how many ‘walk-up’ spectators there are. More than 116,000 watched Renagades’ four home matches in BBL5. Television audience on Ten Sports is consistently well beyond a million, and the the Women’s BBL is also having a big impact with viewers.

In a way it is a marketers dream: good weather, large grounds, the holiday season, cheap ticketing (Renegades membership starts from A$12.50, which gives access to four home matches and the MCG derby against the Stars), an important free-to-air reach (Ten Sports is in the third year of a five-year deal worth A$100m) as well as a digital platform. It is said that cricket has now overtaken Australian Rules as the go-to sport for young boys.

Both Melbourne and Sydney are different to the other cities in that they support two teams, both an artificial creation, with the associated difficulties of establishing support and loyalty from scratch. In Melbourne, Cricket Victoria effectively divided the state into two, ‘brand-allocating’ the east to the Stars and the West to Renegades, and then the city into north and south of the Yarra river. The Renegades are the north, playing not at the MCG but at the privately owned Etihad, a venue with a sliding roof, primarily for Australian Rules but multi-purpose. For the last four editions of BBL Stuart Coventry, as CEO of Renegades, has had the job of developing what he calls the Renegades brand, in part cross-over with the Stars; the two teams work together across digital, creative and ticketing as well as joint sponsorship opportunities.

Renegades are profitable as I estimate all BBL teams will be this year. In the future it will be even stronger Stuart Coventry

Beyond that the Renegades is an independent club with a board of seven directors newly chaired by Jason Dunstall, an AFL great from Queensland. “We have to find uniqueness,” Coventry explains. “We aim to be the coolest brand in the BBL with the best players to provide a winning formula and first-class entertainment. We have tried to create different identities by understanding the DNA of the western region of Victoria, which is a bit edgy, risk taking, and high energy. We have maintained an element of rebellion but we want to win games, titles, have the best team, support, and membership programme, and be commercially successful.”

Teams are provided with Cricket Australia centralised funding at around 50-60% of total income. “As Etihad is a non-traditional cricket venue,” Coventry says, “part of the cost of hire is also funded by CA which, for example, covers the drop-in wicket installation, and the loss of commercial opportunities that our own ground would bring. The broadcast deal monies sit with CA.” Each team has a salary cap of A$1.3m (A$1.4m for BBL6) for its 18 players, and it is rigidly adhered to. “Renegades are profitable,” Coventry says, “as I estimate would be the case for all BBL teams this year. The BBL provides a very sustainable product and if we get more games in the future it will be even stronger.”

Finch is in his fourth season as the Renegades captain and, while Coventry builds his brand, to him falls the task of uniting a collection of players into a functioning unit. BBL has a high turnover of players and five have left Renegades from the previous season, with six joining. He explains how he approaches this aspect of his job. “The important thing to remember,” he tells me,” is that everyone is here for the same reason. So while you are together only for a short period of time, either from all over the world or as interstate players, the foundations are already set in Australian cricket culture that you are a good bloke, you try your best. That is the easy part.

“It can be difficult at times with overseas players when guys come in with different cultures or from different religious groups. So then it’s trying to find a balance and making them comfortable without interfering with what we are trying to do. We are lucky that many of us know each other from playing with and against one another for years and if you are a dickhead you just don’t last in the game, you become expendable very easily. So the big part of creating a good culture is having good people.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A different game: catching practice gear has changed a bit over the years. Photograph: Daniel Hartley-Allen/The Guardian

The Renegades’ draw card this year – signed before Saker’s appointment, and controversial, as it turns out – is Gayle. This is the ultimate gun-for-hire cricketer who has belted sixes for Jamaica, Royal Challengers Bangalore, Dhaka Gladiators, Matabeleland Tuskers, Barisal Bulls, Kolkata Knight Riders, Worcestershire, Somerset, Sydney Thunder, Western Warriors, West Indies, Jamaica Talawahs, Highveld Lions, Barisal Burners and now Melbourne Renegades. His status as one of the most remarkable batsmen of all time brooks no argument. His numerous records occupy pages but for our purposes here suffice to say that he is the only player to hit a Test match 300 (this as one of four to achieve it twice), an ODI 200, and a T20 international 100. At the Gabba, he will hit his 600th T20 six: no one else comes even close.

Gayle ambles into practice at Junction Oval in St Kilda where Renegades train, sits on a cart and opens his kitbag. He is accompanied by his bat sponsor and two technicians from the broadcaster who are fitting him with the harness that will accommodate the transmitting device for his special helmet camera and microphone during the match. He has allocated himself the number 333, his highest Test match score, an irony given how he now earns a living. I tell him it also makes him only half a beast. He chuckles.

No one hits the ball with his thunderous ferocity, but hours of practice go into making the game look effortless. Small details. He will tell of the moments at the start of a big match as he prepares for a fast bowler to run in at him. For several thousand years, archers have employed breathing techniques to steady themselves: first several deep breaths, as if drawing the string, then a slight exhalation, before holding the air in, and letting it out only as the arrow flies. Gayle may not have studied it but instinctively he understands the practice. “Controlling my breathing definitely helps me,” he says, “especially facing the first over where the new ball might do a little bit. You want to have as still a head as possible and if the coordination of your breathing is out of sorts then your head will keep moving. You have to be very still to focus

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Chris Gayle allocated himself the shirt number 333, which is his highest Test score, after arriving at the Renegades. Photograph: Mike Selvey/The Guardian

He collects two new bats. These look huge but weigh in at 2lb13ozs, rather less than the 3 1/2 pound monsters of 30 years ago. Unusually for a big man with enormous hands the handle, while long, seems relatively slender. In the first match he intends to use a specially made gold-coloured bat. This, rather disappointingly, turns out to look less like something Midas would use than a club bat newly soaked in linseed oil for the season.

Gayle goes in the nets and for half an hour has throw-downs from the fielding coach Trevor Penney and afterwards, Gayle sits back on the cart and talks about his preparation. “You need a good build-up leading up to the game,” he says. “A couple of days before, you want to have bowlers bowling at you – get a feel of things, get the technique in order. The day before a game, it is all about some fine tuning: balance, grip, feel of hitting the ball. I need to leave practice feeling confident that the ball is coming off the bat right. After that it is more about thinking about the bowlers you are coming up against.”

“You can practice specifically, especially if you have a good idea of the areas a bowler is going to bowl. These days everyone looks to see a batsman’s weak point and try to target those, so you have to work on these and make them a strength as well. You should be able to score all around the wicket, so you are not going to get tied down by one particular bowler. I practice my six-area, more fine tuning, hitting the ball straight. Sometimes you are looking to hit the ball in a particular area and its not going to go there, so it is vital you want to make sure your body is in a good position to strike the ball. Do this, and a mis-hit will still go a good distance so you still get value for the shot. You can’t hit every ball exactly where you want, that just isn’t going to happen.” He is to demonstrate this amply at the Gabba where one enormous legside heave sends the ball flying from the leading edge, over extra cover for an extraordinary six.

For all his incredible overall strike rate, though, Gayle can be a cautious starter. “You want to give yourself a chance and I know I can make up the dot balls, capable enough of taking 18 or 20 from an over to build up a strike rate. I don’t allow myself to panic. Once I get a better feel for the wicket I know I can get value for the shots. I pinpoint the bowlers to target as well and definitely wait for some. This is just knowing your opponents.” He strolls off to do some fielding.

You want to give yourself a chance – I know I can make up the dot balls. I don't allow myself to panic Chris Gayle

A couple of days earlier, Finch, the world’s top-ranked T20 batsman, is sitting in the cafe of the exclusive Olsen hotel in Melbourne’s South Yarra district that both the Renegades and Stars use as their base, pondering the prospect of the partnership with Gayle. Will it be a battle of the egos, I ask him, how does he see the dynamic?

“It could be difficult at times,” he says, “but when you open the batting with someone I find that some days you actually want all the strike, and it is quite uncommon for both to go out and have a day out from ball one. Chris is amazing at destroying attacks and hitting sixes but there might be a day when I get off to a flyer and his job will be to support me. He is someone who probably doesn’t get enough credit for how well-planned he is for T20 cricket. If you watch his innings there might be times where he is five off 15 balls but he is just waiting for the right match-up and to target them. It is about having an understanding and being honest. About being able to say, ‘I don’t match up well against this guy, can you take most of it?’ and you just try and get down the other end. It is definitely an exciting prospect.”

I mention a white-ball game in the back of my mind in which Gayle, uncharacteristically, faced perhaps a dozen balls before getting off the mark and ask how he would handle a similar situation now. “That is 10% of innings,” he says, “and you don’t want that. I would have to seize the initiative and say we have to push on. I think it is about reading and knowing the game. A player might be struggling a little bit, so give him the opportunity to get down the other end, have a breather and refocus. It might mean I have to up my tempo but that is T20 cricket, you have to be prepared to do that and at times be prepared to look a fool doing it. With Chris it may be my job to play a higher-tempo, higher-risk innings from the start, trying to make sure we are still scoring while he is finding his zone.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Fans enjoying the practice match between the Melbourne Renegades and the Melbourne Stars at Simonds Stadium in Geelong. Photograph: Daniel Hartley-Allen/The Guardian

He is honest about his own game. “As a general rule, I find that someone who can swing the ball back into me is a big danger. Anyone who can swing it away I feel I can free my hands and play a more damaging game. I can hurt more through the offside than the onside. With a guy angling it in, I’m a bit more conservative. I don’t walk across my stumps to work the legside. Outswing though I feel comfortable against, I can expose my stumps and don’t mind doing that. You identify guys or types of bowlers that you have mentally got the wood over, and in particular for me that is an off-spinner. So if one comes on, my partner knows that I am going to get going and there are not going to be too many singles. And if there is a single, you have to get me back on strike straight away. I’m a big believer that if I have a plan, for example, to hit an offie for a six every ball and I shank the first one and get out, I’m ok with that. I was true to my plan.”

It is 10 December, four days earlier, and the Melbourne morning rush has gone when Saker leaves his house, completes the school run, then hits the freeway for the drive to his office at the headquarters of Cricket Victoria in Jolimont Street, across the park from the Melbourne Cricket Ground. It is a journey he has been making since June when he left his England post and returned to his native Australia. He is heading for his first Renegades coaching meeting, taking place in a small room to the back of the CV building.

David Saker, the Melbourne Renegades coach. David Saker – Melbourne Renegades coach.

His coaches are already assembling when he walks in: Finch arrives with the meeting already in progress.

There is a matter of some urgency: the Renegades squad has been depleted by national selections and injury. Two pace bowlers, James Pattinson and Peter Siddle, are currently preparing for Australia’s Test series against West Indies while Peter Nevill is the Test wicketkeeper. Meanwhile, Wade, another key player, had fractured his shoulder in November, and his availability now would only be decided following the practice matches before the opening fixture in Brisbane. He will play as a batsman only in the first practice against the Stars in Geelong the following day.

But Saker had some more bad news. Yet another of his pacemen, Nick Winter, had sustained a side-strain and would take no part in the competition.

They need a bowler, one not already registered, and from extensive data, one stands out literally and metaphorically. Cameron Gannon is 6ft 7ins tall, brisk, with good bounce. He has haemorrhaged almost nine runs per over in T20 for Brisbane Heat but has taken 22 wickets in 13 games which is an excellent strike rate: get early wickets in T20 and you tend to win.

He sounds too good not to be on a list somewhere but it transpires there could be a snag. Two years ago Gannon received a ban because of an illegal action – a 24-degree elbow flex of his bowling arm on all deliveries, way beyond the legal limit of 15 degrees – and no-one now is sure of the current situation or what the consequences might be of playing him.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Renegades’ Nathan Rimmington receives treatment after a practice match. Photograph: Daniel Hartley-Allen for the Guardian

Standard practice in first-class cricket is for a player to be reported rather than no-balled during a match, with a six-week period in which he must be tested but can still play. Clearly this timeframe does not work for a five-week competition and for BBL, the umpire makes an instant decision and a two on-field strikes and out rule applies instead.

They look at some footage and photographs. “Let’s secure him,” says Finch, “even if it is short term. He is versatile, has got the height if it’s an uneven shitheap, and presents the seam well in any case.”

“What happens,” comes the question, ”if he then gets done for throwing? Can he be replaced?” Coventry is asked to make enquiries and the good news is that Gannon’s action has been cleared in any case. “I’m happy to go with that,” Saker decides, and Coventry goes off to call Gannon’s agent in Adelaide. Twenty minutes later, the deal is done. Gannon will join up with the squad in Brisbane.

Thoughts turn to Brisbane Heat and speculation about their side. The Heat squad list is written down on the whiteboard and from it a potential 12 extrapolated. Saker is keen to know what their top order might be and makes some calls to Brisbane to see if anyone might go and watch the Heat in practice. Tim McCaskill, Saker’s bowling coach, has printed off some data sheets, which offer in columns a full analysis of the career batting of each prospective opponent: details which includes strike rates against fast, fast-medium, and medium pace, together with orthodox and wrist spin, all of either arm. Another table collates each individual innings.

Later, over lunch in the MCG cafe, they decide to concentrate specifically on three dangerously fast scorers: Chris Lynn, the most experienced of the Heat batsmen, Jimmy Peirson, and Ben Cutting. Saker’s phone call to Brisbane has paid dividends, and the informations suggests that Peirson rather than Lendl Simmons will open with Joe Burns with the West Indian at three, followed by Lynn, Cutting and Nathan Reardon. Saker is sceptical of the openers, and thinks Simmons has to fill that slot (he was partly right: Simmons and Peirson open), but Peirson’s statistics are examined. Immediately it is obvious that he slaughters fast-medium and medium pace to the extent of an average of almost two runs per ball. Against left-arm orthodox spin, though, his strike rate drops to 87.5 runs per hundred balls. It is a stark difference. Saker is concerned anyway that he is deprived of top pace, and an obvious solution might be to start with Doherty’s left-arm spin at one end. If it wasn’t for Lynn.

Lynn is the Brisbane Heat’s gun batsman. Thirty matches in the previous BBLs has brought him 644 runs from 468 balls, an overall strike rate of 137.6. He has hit 38 sixes against bowling of all pace. But he is particularly brutal against fast bowling (strike rate 210.9), clinical against fast medium, hits off spin, but seems to get tied down by left-arm orthodox spin, against which his scoring rate is reduced to 85.9. It is clear from a wagon wheel chart that his boundary shots tend to come in two areas: fours he hits mostly in an arc from straight to extra cover; sixes he clears his front leg and belts over a legside mirror image. Footage shows an upright stance and tendency to sit in the crease, so from the seamers, the yorker and bouncer are obvious ripostes early on, and balls aimed at his hip from a heavy length.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The young Renegades player Gehan Seneviratne watches the team in action against the Melbourne Stars. Photograph: Daniel Hartley-Allen for the Guardian

Later on in an innings Lynn tends to come down the pitch and give himself room to the leg side, so the yorker, delivered down the tramlines outside off-stump becomes a viable option to cut down scoring. For a moment, there is the consideration that they might try and sign a second-left armer and agree that two spinners might be a good option on their own turf at the Etihad. Maybe not at the Gabba though. They will try and bowl Doherty as much to him as they can, so he will be held back.

It is an hour’s drive to Geelong, and the evening is bitterly cold for the exhibition match against the Stars. The schools have just broken up and a crowd of more than 10,000 turn up to see a hard-fought game, won, in the end, by the Stars. The post-match dressing room is a welcome, warm environment in the late evening. Boxes of training and playing kit are stacked in one corner and players raid these according to their needs. After the match Saker is pleased by the manner in which they coped with Glen Maxwell, one of the most versatile T20 batsmen in the world, and believes his side learned more about the Stars than their opposition learned about them. He was impressed by the bowling of Guy Walker, an Australia Under-19 player who had yet to make a BBL debut. There was encouragement, too, in that Wade batted without discomfort, despite slipping first ball and landing on his injured shoulder: he insists he will be fit for the first match in Brisbane.

Four days before the Brisbane game comes another setback. The Renegades have a final practice match at Junction Oval and the second over of the opposition innings is in progress when the ball is played towards Callum Ferguson on the boundary, who is running at an angle in a routine piece of fielding only to stumble and collapse to the ground. A few years ago, when in the field for Australia in the final of the 2009 Champions Trophy, he fell over the top of his right knee and did such damage to the ligaments that he was out of cricket for months and required reconstructive surgery. At that stage he had established himself in the Australian ODI team but his career stalled: he has played five matches since and none in the past four years. Now it looks as if he has revisited the injury. After five minutes, he is helped to his feet, and with support either side, limps to the dressing room. It does not look good. Ferguson is lying on his back on the treatment couch in the physio’s room. There is a large icepack on his knee but it is the left one rather than the hitherto troublesome right.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Aaron Finch, the Renegades captain, waits to bat before the practice match against the Melbourne Stars. Photograph: Daniel Hartley-Allen for the Guardian

He is massively frustrated. A scan will reveal the full extent of the injury the following day, but he fears ligament damage. “Just twisted on it,” he says, “don’t know why it happened. But that looks like it for this competition.”

It transpires he has ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament and will require more surgery. He gives a wry smile. ”That’s sport for you,” he emails me some days later. All the work, the buildup and the anticipation has gone in an innocuous second. The coaches decide not to replace Ferguson at this stage.

Saker takes his squad to Brisbane two days before the match, for training, first at Allan Border field, home of the Queensland CA, before a bonding barbecue in the evening at a friend’s house by the Brisbane River; and then on the Friday, at the Gabba. He would like some fielding under lights but is not allowed. The final meeting takes place in the dressing rooms, and lasts around half an hour. “We reinforced things we had talked about all week, with bat, ball, in the field, and about the opposition,” Saker explains. A T20 match, he says, is 240 individual contests. “So we need to focus on the next contest, the next ball.” He announces his team: Finch, Gayle, White, Wade, Bravo, Beaton, Cooper, Walker, Tremain, Nathan Rimmington and Doherty. The strategies, tactics, and thoughts remain on the white board.

19 December: Brisbane Heat 180-5; Melbourne Renegades 184-3

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Game night: fans pack into the Gabba in Brisbane for the opening game between Brisbane Heat and the Melbourne Renegades. Photograph: Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images

Heat win the toss, bat and their score is a good one. But Renegades are happy they have kept Lynn, who makes 35 from 20 balls, in check. Only during a brief assault on Walker, whom he hit for 18 from four balls, did he get into gear. There were eight singles in Lynn’s innings, which means they successfully got him off strike, and he hit only one further boundary. Yet for all the data that shows his weakness against left-arm spin, Doherty was able to bowl only four deliveries to him at a cost of seven runs. His wicket came with a low full toss from Bravo heaved to midwicket. That wasn’t in the plans.

Renegades have never chased so many to win. But Finch and Gayle get off to a flyer and when Gayle is caught for 23, the captain and White add 111 for the second wicket before both are out to successive deliveries. Eventually, 25 are needed from the last two overs of which Bravo, with a couple of sixes, and Wade make short work, the keeper carving the winning boundary. Finch’s 65 from 45 balls went according to plan except he had not anticipated facing up to the left-arm seamer Josh Lalor for the first over: he duly flipped the fourth ball over square-leg for six.

We are a month on: I am in South Africa for England’s tour and Renegades’ season is over. They won only two of their last seven matches, in the final one of which, against Adelaide Strikers, they needed to make 171 in 15.5 overs to make the four-team playoff on net run-rate. Despite Gayle’s remarkable assault, in which he hit seven sixes (six of them in seven balls) and two fours, they finished 27 runs short. They ended fifth in the table.

So the Renegades disband. Saker tells me his disappointment at the eventual outcome and says they only have themselves to blame. But it was a difficult season, with the injuries to Winter and Ferguson, and unavailability through international duty of Patterson, Siddle, while Finch and Wade miss the last three matches. And there was the controversy caused by Gayle’s inappropriate on-field snap interview with the Ten Sports female presenter Mel McLaughlin, for which Renegades fined him A$10,000. Further allegations appeared in the press which Gayle strongly denies. Within the Renegades, Gayle was excellent, but his record innings may well be his parting shot to Australian cricket. It is doubtful he will play in that country again.

Back in the Gabba dressing rooms, before the evening broke up, I had asked if I might say something. I would be leaving for Durban shortly and I wanted to thank them for their time, cooperation and indeed friendship. But I found myself thanking them as well for helping rekindle memories of what it was like to be in a cricket dressing room, the camaraderie, and the sheer joy of fighting hard and winning a match. I have been genuinely astounded by the level of skill exhibited: by Bravo’s intricately disguised slower ball; Rimmington’s sharp bouncer; the ability of Beaton to power the ball in practice as if the stiff wind in his face did not exist; the athleticism in the field; and the high degree of thought that goes into planning and executing a T20 match at this level. They are, I tell them, remarkable cricketers, and I am both envious and grateful. They have opened my eyes.

Aaron Finch played only five games before national duty, but hit 246 runs, with three 50s and a strike rate of 143

In eight games, Chris Gayle hit 20 sixes and 18 fours in 260 runs with a strike rate of 155.69

Chris Tremain played all eight matches, took six wickets at an economy rate of 7.77, excellent for a power-play bowler

Cameron Gannon managed four wickets in six matches, at an economy rate of 8.24

With 378 runs at a strike rate of 173.39, Chris Lynn was adjudged the player of the tournament. He hit one century and three 50s in his eight innings.

I would like to thank everyone at Renegades for their help, but in particular David Saker and Aaron Finch for allowing me into the inner sanctum; and Stuart Coventry and, in charge of media relations, Hamish Jones, for whom nothing was too much trouble.