Rain in Hobart proved a constant menace throughout the 1998/99 cricket season but probably never more so than on the fourth and final day of the Sheffield Shield match between Tasmania and New South Wales.  After leaden skies had chosen yet another Sunday in this weather-ravaged season to descend on Bellerive, the game was washed out with New South Wales left agonisingly short of securing the six points that it needed to lift itself above Tasmania on the Shield table.  By the time that play was officially abandoned at 4:36 pm, Tasmania's tailenders had tenaciously lifted their team's score to 9/240 in its second innings and an overall lead of 210 runs.  This came after Jamie Cox (128) and Michael Bevan (133) had traded excellent centuries in the teams' first innings - Bevan's effort proving slightly more decisive in the final analysis given that his team was able to reach 9/308 in response to Tasmania's 278.

Nevertheless, this was still a game that contained more talking points than might ordinarily have been expected in a last round Sheffield Shield clash which pitted against one another the two teams at the foot of the competition table.  Galvanised principally by an announcement on the eve of the match from one of the country's all time favourite cricketing sons, David Boon, that he would be retiring from first class cricket in Australia at its completion, the contest between Tasmania and New South Wales indeed took on a considerable degree of significance.  That it is quite likely to have also represented the last first class appearance of former Australian captain, Mark Taylor, only added to the sense of occasion.  Boon's sensational dismissal for a golden duck in his last innings for the Tigers; Taylor's despairing inability to surpass Alan Kippax's record for the most runs in Sheffield Shield cricket for New South Wales (he remained six runs adrift of Kippax's sixty-three year old mark at the end of the game); a wonderful batting double from Boon's heir apparent to the position of Tasmanian captain in Cox (128 and 70); Bevan's disciplined and determined hundred; a fine all round exhibition from Gavin Robertson; and even Blues debutant Trent Johnston's almost inconceivable method of sustaining a nasty arm injury (arriving late for the trip back to the team hotel on the second night of the match, he caught his arm in the door of the team bus as he was hurriedly attempting to board the vehicle!), all combined to add some sparkle to an intriguing, competitive and good natured match played on a slow Bellerive pitch offering far more assistance to bowlers than is traditionally the case at the venue.  Furthermore, the excruciating nature of the struggle to avoid the wooden spoon - as it turned out, the teams' positions were decided by the quotient formula used to separate teams finishing equal on points - delightfully and fascinatingly made it a game where calculators, computers and statisticians were called into constant service.

For Tasmania, the match represented a bad end to a generally poor season. After finishing a close second to Western Australia in last year's competition, the Tasmanians really never looked like challenging for a position toward the top of the table this time around.  Although it should be said, in their defence, that they were unfortunate enough to have four of their ten games significantly affected by poor weather this season, the standard of their play never seriously matched their followers' nor their own lofty expectations.  With the bat, only their brilliant opener Jamie Cox and their aggressive middle order player Daniel Marsh even made individual centuries this season - a statistic which, as well as any other, underlined the consistent inability of the side's batsmen to appropriately fulfil their capabilities.  Although their seasons were sprinkled with some positive performances, Dene Hills, Michael DiVenuto, Shaun Young and Boon himself all played below the standards they had set for themselves in previous years.

Similarly, their bowlers were unable to recapture their form of twelve months earlier.  Whilst the absence (due to national team commitments) for most of the season of star bowler Colin Miller was a major mitigating factor, they did not at any stage seriously threaten to crash through opposition batting line-ups in anything like the same manner as they had done so effectively during 1997/98.  Despite struggling toward the end of the season, Gerard Denton showed he has a promising future as a paceman for the State; Queensland recruit Greg Rowell (in a very fleeting one season departure from Brisbane) worked hard although being restricted by a persistent foot injury; and the aging Mark Ridgway gave of his all in his last season of first class cricket, but they proved consistently unable to bowl teams out twice.  In fact, the acquisition of twenty opposition wickets was a feat they performed only twice - by no means coincidentally, one of these instances occurred in Brisbane in December when they claimed their one and only outright success.

New South Wales, too, had a dismal year and the sad early conclusion at Bellerive was, in many ways, a metaphor for their season.  Substandard batting, in particular, featured in a summer in which they were never able to exude the healthy degree of confidence and assurance which generally characterises the approach of New South Welshmen in interstate competition. So disappointing was the year, moreover, that they achieved a very dubious but nevertheless highly consequential feat - for this was the first occasion on which they had finished sixth in Sheffield Shield standings. Notwithstanding the notion that the Blues have, contrary to popular misconception, previously finished in last place in the Shield (they have actually done so on as many as six occasions prior to 1997/98), this would accordingly almost certainly have to go down as one of their worst ever efforts.  Whilst they too were hampered by bad weather more than once, their pre-Christmas form, in particular, was inexplicably bad.  Perhaps even more damningly, their only outright victory was achieved in November on a pitch of dubious quality at the SCG; it was in that game that they bowled Western Australia out for the remarkable scoreline of 58 to claim their win. 

Although Taylor was at pains in his press conference after the match to stress that this was ``(no) time to panic'', it was even a season in which some internal turmoil bubbled to the surface.  The most obvious manifestation of this occurred during the second last game (against South Australia in Sydney) when Bevan - whose outstanding performances over a long period of time have now elevated him to the status of something of an elder statesman in NSW cricket - made public a range of grievances that the team's players apparently harbour about the general direction in which the State's cricket has headed recently.  However, it would be wrong to concentrate entirely on negatives - for the rapid rise to prominence of batsman Corey Richards (who blazed a noteworthy trail for himself by hitting four first class centuries before Christmas and narrowly missing a fifth) offered at least one source of genuine encouragement for the future. Similarly, and notwithstanding his penchant for bowling far too many short deliveries at times, fiery speedster Brett Lee made an excellent impression - his 5/53 in the second innings of this match capping an inspiring latter part of the season.