Australia’s male domestic one-day competition ends its 49th season today at Blundstone Arena, Bellerive, with South Australia playing Western Australia.
Shunted to the October pre-season but still a more substantial competition than the V&G Knockout or Gillette Cup of its early years, as the JLT One-Day Cup it now sports its eleventh naming rights sponsor. Not one, alas, that enables sausage sizzles cooked on the sponsor’s product on the hill, as sponsor number ten, Matador, did.
Today’s final is the first that has not been televised on either free-to-air or pay television, with Cricket Australia streaming the match over their website and app. Will we get viewer stats? I hope so but am not confident. The fact remains, though, that CA actually paid the Nine Network to screen their matches on Gem over the past couple of seasons. We need to accept that OTT services or Netflix-type providers are the future.
It all began at the MCG on New Year’s Day 1970 when New Zealand, who played in the first six years of the competition, defeated Victoria by six wickets in what today would be considered a horrifically slow-scoring game. With thanks to the National Library of Australia’s marvellous Trove digitisation project, here’s a newspaper report on the game from the Canberra Times’ legendary Rohan Rivett.
My favourite final came in 1977 at the MCG, when WA defeated Victoria by one wicket with three balls to spare in front of a crowd of 32908. Did I watch it on the ABC or Channel Ten? I don’t recall for certain any more but I know they both televised it. Here’s a newspaper report of the final.
Here are some other more recent choices for greatest one-day final suggested via Twitter:
Highlights of the tied 2012 Ryobi Cup final: https://t.co/XbRaAKgheR
https://t.co/M0o2f2Evxc— Rick Eyre on cricket (@rickeyrecricket) October 21, 2017
Ryobi Cup final 2012-13 Qld defending a small Duckworth-Lewis target to beat Victoria https://t.co/4xTa2v8i7K https://t.co/PUKZNtH71Z
— Rick Eyre on cricket (@rickeyrecricket) October 21, 2017
With some of the better known cricket websites becoming increasingly un-navigable, the best overview history of the Australian one-day competition can be found on Wikipedia.