Before the final day drama of the title clash, South Australia were involved in an even more intriguing encounter on their way to the Shield title in 1996
Friction and fractures: The forgotten game in SA's last Shield triumph
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The defining and enduring memory of South Australia's most recent Sheffield Shield title win 29 years ago remains the tension-filled final day of the 1995-96 summer as their tailenders somehow held out Western Australia for a full session to secure a draw.
However, SA might not have been hosting the play-off – in the era when the home team only needed a draw to hoist the Shield – if not for a crucial outright win achieved in surreal circumstances less than two months before the season decider.
The teams involved in that game were investigated by the then-Australian Cricket Board (now Cricket Australia) for conspiring to contrive a result, an inquiry that was ultimately dismissed with no adverse finding.
But despite the match featuring a first-innings forfeit which had only happened once previously in more than 100 years of Shield cricket (and never since), plus some fractious exchanges that saw a future Test player end up in hospital, it remains largely forgotten.
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Fortunately, some of the protagonists in that rain-soaked square off at Hobart's Bellerive Oval in early February 1996 retain reasonably clear memories and have helped shed light on what went down.
By way of context, cricket worldwide was in a state of flux at that time.
The ICC had decreed Australia's refusal to play their upcoming 1996 World Cup matches scheduled for Sri Lanka, over security concerns in the wake of a bomb blast in Colombo that killed almost 100 people, meant they would have to forfeit those games.
And three days before the vital Shield encounter against Tasmania, SA were involved in a controversial One-Day Cup clash against New South Wales in Sydney that initially saw the Blues celebrate a one-run win before the result was reversed due to a scorers' error.
It was five minutes after play finished that the absence of a two-run penalty for a NSW no-ball in SA's tally was uncovered, and the dispute between the states as to the rightful result continued for almost a week before the ACB ruled in SA's favour.
By that time the team had arrived in Hobart to be greeted by grey skies and a forecast for days of rain, which meant an already agitated SA captain Jamie Siddons was actively plotting how he might pocket the six outright points needed to stay atop the table.
His Tasmania counterpart David Boon, playing his first Shield game since calling time on his international career the previous month, was also eyeing full points given his team sat third on the ladder behind SA and NSW with four rounds remaining.
"Two points (for a drawn result) are not enough," Siddons declared upon landing in Tasmania to be confronted by a bleak weather outlook.
Pressed on whether he and Boon might try and contrive a result given the likelihood at least a day would be lost to rain, Siddons replied prophetically: "You can't really play like that until the last day."
Bellerive Oval had proved a bowlers' graveyard for much of that summer, with just 11 wickets falling for a combined tally of 1385 runs in a tedious draw between Tasmania and Queensland at summer's start.
But the prospect of a greener, softer surface prompted SA to gamble on a three-pronged pace attack with future Test quicks Jason Gillespie and Paul Wilson leading the attack alongside Brad Wigney, preferred to Mark Harrity who was battling back soreness.
Tasmania's bowling featured pacemen Josh Marquet, Mark Ridgway and Colin Miller (the summer before he took up the off-spin that would lead to his subsequent Test selection) but seam-bowling allrounder Shaun Young was hobbled by shin splints.
Having omitted Test-capped leg-spinner Peter McIntyre due to prevailing conditions, Siddons then opted to bowl first for the only time that season upon winning the toss.
Wilson, playing just his second Shield game having relocated to Adelaide from Newcastle in the hope of convincing head coach Rod Marsh he should be accepted into the fabled AIS Cricket Academy, tore through Tassie's top-order to leave them 5-122.
By the end of day one the home team had rallied to 8-258 on an atypical pitch that offered significant bounce, but so poor was the forecast for day two that SA celebrated their initial efforts at their hotel bar until well into the evening.
"We knew there was a fair bit of rain around, so it became more of a social trip," Wilson, a former international umpire who is now a member of CA's umpire selection panel, told cricket.com.au recently.
"On the second morning our coach, Jeff Hammond, told us players to 'stay at the hotel, I'll go down to the ground and let you know the chances of getting on to play'.
"A bit later there was a hurried voice down the phone to the hotel, and it was 'Bomber' (Hammond) saying 'please get down here now, we're going to start on time'.
"So we all raced down there, walked on the field and we could see the rain coming up the River Derwent, and it set in by the time we got to the middle and literally didn't stop the whole day.
"After that washout, we enjoyed another social night and same thing happened on the third morning – coach went to the ground first then another hurried phone call saying 'boys you gotta get down here, we're starting on time'.
"So we get down there, we walk out with the umpires and sure enough it starts raining again and day three's washed out.
"Eventually we turn up on day four and it became a situation where we've got to try and make a game of it somehow."
Siddons could see SA's place at the top of the Shield ladder faltering due to imminent results in the other concurrent game where Queensland had earned outright points over NSW inside three days on a typically spicy Gabba deck.
In addition to taking a swipe at Queensland Cricket for preparing an obvious 'result pitch' at such a crucial point of the season, Siddons flagged his preparedness to declare SA's first innings closed without facing a ball in the hope Boon would reciprocate and set an outright target.
Boon revealed he was also open to that scenario, but was mindful of the additional overs due to the weather disruptions (a maximum of 120 on day four if weather allowed) and wary of the risk the ACB might deem any eventual outright result to be contrived.
While the laws allow for a team to forfeit an innings at 0-0, the ACB's playing conditions at the time stated "if it is alleged that a result has been contrived and is so reported to the Board then the Board may amend points obtained in the match by either team".
The only other occasion in Shield history a captain has taken the drastic step was in 1991-92 when NSW's Geoff Lawson declared at 0/0 in a similarly rain-ruined game against Tasmania at the SCG.
The ploy failed even though the Blues then bowled out Tasmania for 116 in their second innings, but fell 48 runs shy of their last-day victory target, handing outright points to their rivals and earning public criticism for the manner in which the result was achieved.
The practice fell further into disrepute following the subsequent 2000 Test match between South Africa and England at Centurion, when opposing skippers Hansie Cronje and Nasser Hussain each forfeited an innings after three days were lost to rain.
It was later revealed Cronje received £5,000 and a leather jacket from bookmakers for his role in ensuring an otherwise dead Test match produced a result, as England chased down the generous target of 250 from 75 overs with two wickets in hand.
However, in 1996 an agreement was duly struck between Siddons and future ICC match referee Boon to try and salvage something for either team from the otherwise damp affair.
That plan also seemed set for failure when day four dawned grey and wet, but the rain cleared and umpires ruled play would begin at 1.40pm with a maximum of 78 overs, weather permitting.
The first sign of cracks in the arrangement appeared not because Tasmania opted to bat again in their second innings amid Boon's concern a target of 259 from 78 overs was too generous, but rather the ploy of sending Miller out in place of regular Tasmania opener Dene Hills.
Miller, who played 20 Shield matches for SA between 1988 and 1992 before his move to Tasmania, had clubbed 31 from 25 balls on day one of the game and was the antithesis of the habitually dour Hills at the top of the order.
"He hits the ball well and obviously in the situation they (SA) weren't going to bowl flat out," Boon said of that unexpected move.
"And we thought the best way to get some quick runs in a few overs was with him."
Unfortunately for Miller, the sight of a freewheeling tailender taking advantage of bowlers operating well-below optimum pace suggested to Siddons that Tasmania were trying to set a target that would prove impossible for SA to reel in.
That suspicion heightened when regular opener Jamie Cox was run out trying to get Miller on strike, with Boon's decision to continue batting and send hard-hitting Michael Di Venuto to the middle bringing an immediate response.
"It was only going to be a couple of overs," Wilson recalled of the deal.
"Maybe one from each end, and Jason Gillespie bowled off just a handful of steps in keeping with the social cricket theme of the previous couple of days."
However, when Tasmania's second innings stretched into a third over and the runs continued to flow, Siddons instructed then 20-year-old Gillespie to revert to his full run-up, which, in his first full season of Shield cricket, stretched almost to the fence.
Gillespie's prowess as a fast bowler would earn him a call up to Australia's World Cup squad weeks later when Craig McDermott broke down, and he would form a formidable new-ball pairing with Glenn McGrath when elevated to Test ranks the following summer.
But this day, on a damp and occasionally dicey Bellerive pitch that had spent almost three days under covers, his task was simply to convince Tasmania's carefree batters they had best make good the earlier promise of a sporting declaration.
"My recollection is when we went out to field on that last day, we were just going to bowl off two steps and they were going to go 'bang-bang' and declare," Gillespie told cricket.com.au.
"It was supposed to be batting for one or two overs, but then they didn’t declare and Funky (Miller) had come out to slog us.
"So my memory is that Jamie (Siddons) was cracking it because he had an agreement with Tassie they would bat for one or two overs and when they didn't declare, he said to me 'Dizzy, full run – bowl fast'.
"So I went back to the long run, came in and bowled a bumper and I remember distinctly it pitched outside off stump but jagged back – it would have jagged back a foot or more because the surface was a bit soft.
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"It copped Funky flush in the face, and it broke his cheekbone so he was sent off to hospital.
"It hit him really hard, and I felt pretty sick in the guts about it but I was a kid, I was barely 20 years old."
As Wilson remembers it, the sound of the ball's sickening thump into Miller's left cheek that shattered in three places was followed by the sight of the future Test bowler collapsing into the arms of SA's Paul Nobes fielding at short leg, before being carried from the field.
"It's fair to say the declaration was then pretty imminent," Wilson said, even though Tasmania's bowling stocks were further depleted due to Miller's absence and SA's target stood at a gettable 280 from 73 overs for six invaluable outright points.
As Siddons noted post-game: "It's not nice to put a bowler out of the game but it worked in our favour perfectly and it definitely lifted our confidence."
Despite the early loss of openers Greg Blewett (0) and Nobes (8), a fourth century of the summer to Darren Lehmann, which he reached from 147 balls faced on the tricky surface, saw SA home with more than three overs to spare.
The win enabled SA to finish the regular season four points head of WA, thereby earning a home final and claiming the Shield even though they won just one of their last four games after Hobart, including the drawn play-off.
And it wasn't only the unlikely outright win that proved the essential element of that Bellerive trip in SA's most recent Shield triumph.
"That Tassie game sticks in the memory because, from a team point of view, it was quite a bonding experience for our guys," said Wilson, who would surrender his place in the starting XI to Harrity two games later despite taking 4-50 on day one in Hobart.
"We spent quite a bit of time together obviously during the off days and, in a social sense, on the first night and second night.
"And we only used 15 or 16 players for that whole season, so it made it a really tight group.
"I wasn't in the (team) viewing room on that final day at Adelaide Oval, I was in a different viewing room – in the Chappell Bar under the grandstand, with Brad Wigney and a couple of other lads who were in the squad but had missed out.
"We were having a few nervous beers and seeing what was going to transpire because it really didn't look like with anything for us, except for perhaps a loss.
"It was just that famous draw, and that famous partnership between 'Georgey' (Shane George) and Peter McIntyre that got us the Shield.
"And that's the game everybody remembers."
Sheffield Shield final 2024-25
March 26-30 (10.35am ACDT): South Australia v Queensland, Karen Rolton Oval, Adelaide
The Sheffield Shield final will be broadcast live on Foxtel, Kayo Sports, cricket.com.au and the CA Live app
Sheffield Shield standings 2024-25
| Team | M | W | L | D | N/R | Ded. | Bat | Bowl | PTS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1
SA
|
10 | 6 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 7.61 | 9 | 55.61 |
|
2
QLD
|
10 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 9.06 | 8.7 | 39.76 |
|
3
VIC
|
10 | 4 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 5.19 | 9.3 | 39.49 |
|
4
NSW
|
10 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 6.99 | 8.4 | 36.39 |
|
5
TAS
|
10 | 3 | 5 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 7.72 | 8.2 | 35.92 |
|
6
WA
|
10 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 5.83 | 8.6 | 35.43 |
M: Matches played
W: Wins
L: Losses
D: Drawn
N/R: No results
Ded.: Deductions
Bat: Batting Bonus
Bowl: Bowling Bonus
PTS: Total points