What a peculiar domestic one-day season this has been.

It all started with the axing of a team and yet was followed by a vast expansion in its number of matches.

The tradition of playing semi-finals was abolished but we effectively still had them on the Saturday and Sunday before the Final anyway.

One team entered the concluding weekend of the preliminary series with genuine claims on a spot in the Final only to close the competition in second last place and without a dollar in prizemoney.

A New South Welshman, a Queenslander and a South Australian were playing in their respective home states until well into the season but, by the end of it, had made their interstate debuts in different locations entirely.

A long impasse for at least two regional centres and their populations was broken when state cricket was taken back to their environs after an absence of a number of years. But they only ended up hosting short games; just as the levels of anticipation and excitement at both Launceston and Devonport were high, so the scoring in both matches was low.

For nineteen years, the competition's record individual score of 164 had stood unchallenged by every single batsman who had visited the crease over that period; this summer, an ex-Zimbabwean international waltzed back into the country and, in just his fifth innings in his new surroundings, shattered the mark.

If that wasn't a surprise, then how about a specialist fast bowler's production of arguably the most noteworthy individual batting performance of the summer?

The need to rely on Duckworth/Lewis formulae to establish target scores in rain-reduced games was always in the back of their minds. The presence, as many as fourteen times this summer, in their wicket-taking columns of the man with the longest name in the competition presented significant nuisance value too. But scorers were also kept busier than normal as the introduction of the bonus point system and the potential for run-based penalties for slow over rates impacted upon their work as well.

To top it all perhaps, one match was even farcically abandoned after just five overs as the result of an inadequate pitch. It was the first time in Australian domestic one-day history that a game, once underway, had been called off because of an unsafe surface. And, while it was a turn of events about which we were promised we would learn a lot more, virtually nothing else was subsequently heard about it.

Yet, for all of that, it is as a success rather than as an oddity that the 2000-01 Mercantile Mutual Cup season should be seen. Because, if it is qualities like generating an avid level of interest throughout; continuing to bring a solid core of fans through the gates; and maintaining and improving the high standards of play seen in contemporary Australian matches around which it needs to be judged, then this season's competition can not be marked anything other than highly.

The standard of play was tremendous, the crowds showed no noticeable signs of being deterred by the growth in the number of matches, and the jockeying for positions on the points table among the teams was fascinating throughout. There can hardly be room for much argument in a situation in which the identities of the sides to play in the Final were not determined until the very last match was at its end.

Team totals of 230 or better were registered as many as thirty-one times and yet there were also twenty-three occasions where sides ended with scores of less than 200. Eight times, a match was decided by a margin of less than ten runs. And still, there were thirteen that resulted in the attainment of sufficiently big victories to land the winners a bonus point. The teams could certainly not be accused of producing a range of matches and results that didn't at least have something to suit everyone.

The advent of bonus points, and the still-only-fleeting appearances of the country's premier players around their international commitments, ensures that there still must be some doubt in such a tight and close race as to whether the best two teams have genuinely ended up in the Final. Having beaten the two finalists in three of their four meetings against them (and bear in mind that the only loss came by three runs in a particularly controversial finish), third-placed South Australia seems to have ended up a particularly unlucky casualty this time.

Yet, as it is, a potentially great Final awaits. Indeed, now that the smoke has cleared, it is the rather conventional spectre of a decider between ten-time champion Western Australia and five-time winner New South Wales that lies in wait. They are worthy teams, have worthy one-day histories and are worthy opponents.

The ACB, Mercantile Mutual, and the competition's participants and followers have enjoyed a remarkable season. Unconventional though the one-day summer was, it proved a great one too.

© 2001 CricInfo Ltd