Mercantile Mutual Cup Final: Victoria v New South Wales John Polack for CricInfo - 28 February 1999 CricInfo report

At the end of one of the more lacklustre seasons of domestic one-day cricket in Australia, Victoria has triumphed today in the Final of the Mercantile Mutual Cup competition after defeating New South Wales at the Melbourne Cricket Ground by the margin of 39 runs. Led by an even contribution from their batsmen and an excellent early spell from veteran paceman Paul Reiffel (2/30), the Victorians produced a solid all-round effort to attain a well deserved fourth triumph in thirty years of interstate one-day competition.

Capping a remarkable revival which saw them come from last to first position in the space of just twelve months, the Bushrangers set up their win by producing a total of 231 and then backing it with a tremendous display of bowling and fielding which allowed them to dismiss their opponents for a paltry 192.

Although they looked to be courting disaster when they suffered a disastrous batting collapse which saw them lose 7 wickets for 40 runs over the closing nine overs of their innings, they held their nerve well and their bowlers made the most of increasingly overcast conditions during the afternoon. Indeed, they never really looked likely to lose after Reiffel found the outside edge of the bat of Mark Taylor (0) in the first over and Mark Higgs (0) suicidally ran himself out just eight balls later to reduce his team to the calamitous scoreline of 2/2. The only real show of defiance from a New South Wales batsman came from the indefatigable Michael Bevan, who underlined his incredible capacities as a one day player yet again in making 55. But even he was unable to prevent his team from finally succumbing on the fourth ball of the 46th over of their reply.

Earlier, Victoria's score had been underpinned by two sizeable partnerships - one of 80 between Graeme Vimpani (48) and Brad Hodge (42) for the second wicket and then another of 85 from Laurie Harper (33) and man-of-the-match Ian Harvey (57) for the fourth. In an innings in which they had almost always looked capable of scoring in excess of 250, the Bushrangers lost their momentum badly, however, after Harvey was dismissed (courtesy of a smart run out from New South Wales' captain Mark Taylor following a bad mixup with Harper) in the 42nd over and consequently appeared to have made their task of winning the game a testing one on a placid batting pitch. Such was the extent of the collapse that the departure of Harvey - who rode his luck well in an innings in which he once more showed his discomfort against spin bowling - looked to have even given the Blues the edge by the halfway point of the match.

Whilst it would be unfair to detract from the quality of the Bushrangers' victory, it must nevertheless be said that this season's Mercantile Mutual Cup competition was one throughout which generally mediocre batting reigned and in which the standard of the play was not as strong as it has been in recent years. In a trend which may well have had its antecedents in last season's Final - when the then largely unheralded all-rounder Scott Prestwidge effected a brilliant late order batting performance to guide Queensland to an unlikely victory over New South Wales - it was indeed frequently the case that inexperienced bowlers and comparatively untried batsmen outshone more celebrated players.

Notwithstanding the fact that high quality top order batting was not always completely inconspicuous (the Queensland-Tasmania; Tasmania-New South Wales; and Queensland-Victoria matches providing some welcome such respite), this was also a season in which the tale was one of generally low scoring. This was a pattern which, somewhat fittingly, was never more clearly in evidence than in the final three games of the competition when first South Australia, then Queensland and ultimately New South Wales all failed to adequately recover from disastrous upper order collapses.