On Saturday I went to a Big Bash League game at UTAS Stadium in Northern Tasmania featuring the Hobart Hurricanes.

I mention them together because they were both headlined by the same song.

When Klaus Meine, Herman Rarebell and Rudolf Schenker sat down in their lederhosen at some oktoberfest amid assorted other xenophobic Germanic stereotypes, wondering how they were going to fill the 1984 album Love at First Sting (Scorpions, get it?), little could they know the implications of their Beck’s-fuelled leathery collaboration.

Not only did Rock You Like a Hurricane become their unofficial signature theme song (at least until the demise of the Soviet Communist regime did for Wind of Change what the demise of John Lennon did for sales of Imagine) but 30 years later it would be exhumed from its heavy metal grave and redeployed on the opposite side of the planet to herald the arrival of a short-form cricket team.

Not since Cradle Mountain pioneer Gustav Weindorfer and supermarket tycoon turned Grindelwald visionary Roelf Vos had the consequences of a central European’s actions had such an impact in Tasmania.

Apart from the whole Second World War thing obviously.

But on a balmy summer afternoon in the pre-dawn of 2018, the familiar tones of that 1984 classic, first released on some crazed substance called vinyl, could be heard echoing up Invermay Road.

And it wasn’t just The Scorpions.

Attending a Big Bash League fixture is like being transported back to a time when it was okay to like classic rock.

More Than a Feeling, My Sharona, Sweet Child of Mine, Beat It, Rebel Rebel, Spirit in the Sky and so many more vied for air time over the venue’s much-maligned audio system.

It was like being back at my sixth form disco.

Suddenly mullets were back in, if only I could still grow one.

Rolf Harris and Jimmy Saville were still acceptable children’s entertainers.

Okay, so not everything was better back in the day.

Continuing the musical theme, the BBL just seems to hit the right note for family entertainment.

Re-using the best music and cricketers from the adolescence of the average-aged dad provides the retro appeal to complement the format and stars adored by their offspring.

Meanwhile, for the mums, there was Sydney Thunder dreamboat Chris Green.

Something for everyone.

And Launceston did an excellent job hosting the first BBL match played outside a capital city.

Cricket Tasmania chief executive Nick Cummins had suggested this would be the biggest sporting event in Northern Tasmanian history.

It was a big call but the region is traditionally up for a sporting challenge.

A reconfiguration of seating to accommodate sightscreens at the ground meant the crowd could never match the 20,000-plus Hawthorn heydays and the resulting 16,734 may have been a thousand short of the 17,771 at the Ricky Ponting tribute match in 2014. But it was still comfortably above anything Hawthorn achieved this season and 5724 above what the Hobart team attracted in Hobart for its BBL opener eight days earlier.

Unfortunately, the Hurricanes men’s and women’s teams failed to live up to the billing, both Thunder-struck by their meteorologically-superior adversaries.

George Bailey’s men were undone by the superiority of Green and his less-attractive comrades who claimed two wickets apiece in a ruthless bowling display. 

Meanwhile the women’s team have now been outclassed six times this season by such frightening margins as to beg the question whether they are operating under the same salary cap as their rivals. 

But the crowd lapped it up, and why not, because here was an opportunity to wear purple, put a bucket on your head, play with inflatable objects, ask questions like “What is that tech guy doing to Matthew Wade’s bottom?” and openly sing along to All Right Now by Free – all things normally frowned upon in polite society.

It was also a rare and welcome opportunity to write a column featuring such outdated words as “vinyl”, “disco” and “Rolf Harris”.

And a golden chance to demonstrate a normally well-hidden knowledge of The Scorpions’ criminally under-rated discography by suggesting a Wind of Change appears to be blowing through Australian and Tasmanian cricket, Launceston and Hobart really do exist Under The Same Sun and there could be a few more Big City Nights coming up for Northern Tasmania.