Hitting the Mercantile Mutual Cup sign
It was a simpler time, the mid-90s. We didn’t yet have Tinder, Twitter, Facebook, Pepe the frog, or any of the other stuff that now allows us to ignore the real world and disappear into a technological void, perhaps analysing the precise motivation of Shane Warne’s last Instagram post.
Simpler times beget simpler pleasures, and what pleasure was simpler – or maybe sadder – than sitting on the sofa for an entire day wondering whether Trevor Barsby would finally hit the Mercantile Mutual Cup sign and win his team-mates a six-figure novelty cheque? None, that’s what. Only it wasn’t Barsby who pulled it off in the end.
Steve Waugh was the man, hitting one of the strategically-placed targets to pocket a cool $140,000 from the naming rights sponsors , who were no doubt hedged pretty well for the moment when a batsman finally hit the mark. In Waugh’s case it was a crisp on-drive that cannoned into the tin sign at long-on, sparking wild celebrations. At a guess, some of his team-mates had probably just doubled their annual cricket wage in an instant. (Perspective: only a few seasons earlier, prize money for the tournament’s winning team was just $29,000). Judging by the positioning of Michael Slater’s Oakley eye-jackets as he and Waugh strode through the airport with the giant cheque next morning, they also partied hard in the aftermath.
As the years wore on, a few others joined Waugh in the select group to have pocketed the Mercantile Mutual dosh, though the actual dollar amount seemed to reduce drastically by the year, perhaps in direct response to the sudden inclusion in domestic one-day ranks of the Canberra Comets bowling attack. Shane Lee cracked a Waugh-like on-drive for $90,000 one year (Kerry O’Keefe, channelling Austin Powers: “They’re all off to Hawaii, baby”), while Andy Flower slog-swept Marcus North square at the Adelaide Oval to claim $50,000 for South Australia.
Poetically, the hard-luck story of the bunch was Victoria’s Brad Hodge. Sometime before he officially changed his name by deed-poll to “Unlucky Brad Hodge”, the six-Test batting star was robbed of a windfall when one lusty blow hit the frame supporting the sign and ING, the new incarnation of Mercantile Mutual, weren’t too keen on coughing up. According to the YouTube comments section – traditionally a great source of irrefutable fact – the Vics eventually got half the money and gave it away to charity. Unlucky, Brad Hodge.
Dodgy TV adverts
One appealing quirk of cricket is how many specific numbers elicit strong emotional reactions out of hardcore fans. If we see the number 6,996 anywhere, we think immediately of Sir Donald Bradman. We can’t consider 299 without casting our minds back to the late Martin Crowe, and 501 is not a style of jeans, it’s Brian Lara’s world-record first-class score.
But what about 5,905? I’m adding it to the list now, because it’s the paltry number of YouTube views afforded to one of the video archive’s greatest achievements – the restoration to its full glory of the original Mercantile Mutual Cup theme tune, available in all its glory in the clip below. Surely its innumerable pleasures beg a more handsome tally?
Personally, we can’t think of a better use of 31 seconds of your life right now than drinking in the sight of Wayne Holdsworth and Jo Angel awkwardly juggling the same cricket ball, or a power-struggle between Greg Blewett and Jamie Cox. Greg Rowell staring menacingly into the distance is just the cherry on top.
But that is not the only domestic one-day gem on YouTube. The mid-90s being the zenith of format in a TV marketing sense, the Tasmanian Tigers got on board in 1996 with a version of their own – perhaps the definitive piece of media if we’re ever going to thoughtfully consider the true majesty of Ricky Ponting’s David-Brent-on-steroids goatee beard of the era. Rod Tucker recreating a Sean Young lbw appeal, anyone? Anyway, this effort finally gave the marketing people the answer they were looking for: nope, too much Mark Ridgeway is never enough.
The miracle match – 1976-77
“If WA can win this, it will be one of the great results in Australian cricket.” Richie Benaud wasn’t prone to exaggeration, so he must have sensed something special was afoot during the innings changeover of the 1976-77 Gillette Cup semi-final at Perth’s Waca ground.
There, batting first, the home side had been dramatically routed for 77, not by lightning-quick Jeff Thomson – who managed a modest 1-10 from the four overs he was required to bowl – but at the hands of the less imposing back-up trio of Geoff Dymock, Phil Carlson and Greg Chappell, whose combination of swing and dibbly-dobblies conjured eight of the other nine wickets to fall. Such was the chaos, even Benaud broke his golden rule and described one particularly shambolic dismissal as a “tragedy”.
Still, Queensland’s batting order that day boasted not only Chappell but the master blaster himself, Viv Richards, so most learned observers would not have given the home side a prayer of defending such a meagre total. But Western Australia did have a certain DK Lillee on their side, and that ended up counting for plenty. “Make ‘em fight for it, be buggered,” Lillee is purported to have implored back in the sheds during the innings changeover, before charging out onto the ground in front of his captain Rod Marsh. “We’re going to beat these bastards!”
Perhaps even that is a slightly edited retelling of the tale (“I can’t tell you completely the story because this is a family program,” Ian Chappell once said). When Western Australian selectors Allan Edwards and Lawrie Sawle attempted to enter the changerooms after their batsmen had been sent packing, Lillee’s enraged pep talk to his team-mates had both ducking back out the door within seconds.
But beat them the locals did, spurred on in large part by Lillee’s efforts when he began at the resumption with one of the most captivating overs of fast bowling ever captured on film, in front of a partisan crowd Rod Marsh would later describe as something closer to the atmosphere of a football grand final.
Within minutes, Lillee worked Richards over with a series of team-lifting bouncers – one of them almost knocking the Antiguan star’s cap clean off – before castling him with a resounding clatter of stumps, which Lillee gave a kicking for good measure on his way through. The first wicket to fall in Queensland’s innings, it was the beginning of a Lillee masterclass, aided and abetted by the efforts of Wayne Clark and Mick Malone, which ripped the visitors out for 62 and cemented the encounter as one of domestic one-day cricket’s greatest. It’s certainly the only to be immortalised in a book of its own – “The Miracle Match” by Ian Brayshaw, one of that day’s protagonists.
If the Miracle Match now lives on through literature, it is most poignantly revived through that remarkable vision of Lillee v Richards in the first over of Queensland’s reply, and in the minds of the men who were out there in the middle experiencing it. “Do I remember that game?” Sir Viv asked himself. “It’s never far from the mind, man!”
Victoria wear shorts – 1994-95
Moving from the sublime to the ridiculous, how about the time Victorian cricket administrators decided that the best way of attracting new fans to the summer game was showcasing the legs of Mervyn Gregory Hughes?
That’s what the Bushrangers did during the 1994-95 Mercantile Mutual Cup season, forcing their players to abandon hundreds of years of tradition and wear shorts for their limited overs games. Among the remaining photographic evidence of cricket’s shortest-lived fashion trend, it seems fitting that Troy Corbett should feature.
Yet in all honesty, it’s not even the most baffling fashion decision in the history of domestic one-dayers. During the 1982-83 McDonalds Cup season, batsmen and keepers sometimes wore white leg guards to go with the white ball, and it never seemed fair that professional sportspeople should have to dress head-to-toe in lime green, as was the case for Tasmania in the early 90s. At least Victoria’s gaffe was a lucky charm – other than stepping inside the infamous shorts they didn’t put a foot wrong in 1994-95, winning their first one-day title in 15 years.
Super 8s – 1996
When Greg Chappell devised the Super 8 format for the Australian Cricket Board (now Cricket Australia) in 1996, the intentions were far more humble than the TV rights bun-fights prompted by Twenty20’s megabucks era. It was conceived to financially reward the thick layer of top-class domestic cricketers in Australia whose opportunities for international pay-days were limited by the impenetrable stature of Australia’s international sides of the Waugh era.
By that point the wage gap between Australia’s top 20 players and the highly capable next tier had widened to a problematic extent. So in 1996 the new format was born, along with multiple tournaments of 14-over-per-side, two-hour games devised with pay-TV rights money in mind, all played in the tropical climes of north Queensland, Brisbane and Malaysia during off-peak periods for the players.
The venture lost $1.15 million in its first year, according to former ACB boss Graham Halbish, and for the top-ranking administrator it was also the beginning of the end. Halbish had moved to extend media rights deals beyond 1997, and wrote in his memoir Run Out: “Ken Cowley, chairman of News Limited, had become convinced that Super 8s had the potential to do for world cricket what one-day cricket under lights did for the game in the early 1980s.” But it wasn’t to be. The ACB boss was soon sacked, and Super 8s died on the vine.
Online, this retro oddity lives on in a clip of James Brayshaw being dismissed by both Andy Bichel and Scott Thompson, and we’d recommend staying until the end for a cameo appearance by domestic cricket cult hero Richard Chee Quee, without whom this blog would not be complete.
Adam Dale’s ridicu-catch - 1997
“That’s one of the best catches you will ever see!” OK, Bill Lawry has always been fond of adding an extra helping of mayo to his calls but his description of Adam Dale’s 1997 Mercantile Mutual Cup blinder wasn’t too far off the mark.
A self-described unco, the Queensland paceman thankfully picked a televised match to enjoy his most spectacular fielding moment, sprinting around from long-on at the Gabba and hurling himself through the air to reel in that season’s catch of the year and dismiss New South Wales batsman Phil Emery.
“Ohhhhhh! What a ripper!” screeched Lawry, and he wasn’t just talking about the sight of Scott Prestwidge’s handy medium pace.
