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WEDNESDAY 21 FEBRUARY 2001
Jamie Cox reflects on the Mercantile Mutual Cup season
The Australian Cricket Board and Mercantile Mutual should be congratulated. Yet again, the domestic one-day competition produced some wonderful cricket and the competition changes proved an outstanding success.
The extended series of ten home and away games for each state certainly made for a more even competition, giving traditional slow starters like us a better chance of getting through, and the bonus point has added such a dimension that many good judges are recommending its inclusion in international series. It certainly would have added plenty to the recent one-sided Carlton Series, even though Australia always seemed to play like they were chasing a bonus point anyway.
The competition finished on a disappointing note for the Tigers in Sydney and I could not help but feel a little sorry for Darren Lehmann and the Redbacks. Despite their victory the day before costing us any chance of making the Final, it was an excellent win under pressure and the innings 'Boof' played simply deserved better. However, like us, their destiny was not in their own hands, which probably would not have filled them with high expectations in the first place.
Ironically, the victory that kept them alive also probably cost them dearly, as that same victory meant that the highest we could finish was third. Whilst winning the match remained a priority (third sure is better than fifth), losing our opportunity to play in the Final certainly knocked plenty of the wind from our sails. I also took the opportunity to fiddle with the batting order a little in an attempt to incorporate flexibility into our thinking and also to try and uncover a new formula for us to be able to get 250+ more often.
Whilst the one-day season has held many positives for the Tigers, the one major flaw we have battled has been the ability of our batting line-up to make these big scores consistently and under pressure. We were the kings of low scoring games on difficult wickets, recording all of our four wins with scores of less than 200. But too often we found ourselves incapable of applying significant scoreboard pressure on the more typical flat one-day pitches.
Every side, I am sure, can always look back on opportunities lost throughout a season but, for me, there are three standout games that we should have won but somehow managed to lose.
In the first game against South Australia in Adelaide, they made far too many runs, courtesy mainly of a very large number of wides and no-balls from us. But in the run chase we still needed only seventy off the last ten overs, with nine wickets in hand. Despite us losing only another four wickets, we still fell a handful short and credit had to given to Greg Blewett and Jason Gillespie for fine finishing spells that made boundaries very hard to find.
Two games later - against Western Australia in Hobart - we restricted the Warriors to 250-odd on a very atypical (for one-day cricket) Bellerive belter! With six overs left in the game we needed twenty-four runs to win with six wickets in hand and two batsmen firmly established at the crease. To lose this by a couple of runs infuriated me and I think I then knew that this game would haunt us badly in the wash-up. It was after this game that I started to hatch my plan to return to the middle order to try and close games out. At least then if run chases were lost, I would only have myself to blame.
The third game was one which probably never should have happened at all against the Bulls in Brisbane. The weather in the days leading up to the match was terrible and even on the day itself constant showers looked like washing us away. Still we played and managed to scrape together 140-odd in thirty-nine overs. Not enough in normal conditions but these were far from normal. The ball was seaming and swinging alarmingly and we had the Bulls 7/69, before Jimmy Maher (ironically batting at number seven) and Andrew Bichel snatched the game away without the loss of another wicket. The loss of David Saker to a grade cricket initiated suspension was never more untimely than this game as conditions were ready made for his style of bowling.
So add another twelve points to the nineteen we already had and we end up on top of the table. Without them, we finish fifth and, I think, deservedly so. Opportunity does not always knock that loudly and if you fail to hear the door then it is sure to knock on somebody else's!
Still, results compared to recent years were quite positive and I am sure we have improved significantly over the past two seasons. Our flexibility as a unit is improving and I think our bowling and fielding is second to none in the competition. Now if only our batsmen can finish a couple of games … .
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More Postcards
7 February 2001
Reversing results and the reverse sweep: Jamie Cox on challenges for the Tigers and contemporary captains
18 January 2001
The ups and downs of state cricket: Jamie Cox reflects on a remarkable five days
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