Thursday 29 October 2009

Bran Biscuits & An English Lord

Lord Wheatbix Sheffield must be turning repeatedly in his grave at the knowledge that he stands along side the great Aussie breakfast cereal as the symbol of all that is cricket in Australia. All we need in the ensuing few years is the Orchy One Day Cup and Yoplait Twenty20 in domestic cricket and past, present and future sponsors would make the complete breakfast. In Tony Greig parlance, they'd be a great start in defeat and won.

After being Pura than low fat milk, CA was supposed to making the domestic four day competition - if you'll indulge my ABC speak - purer and hence the return to original name of one of cricket's oldest and most enduring symbols. That resolve has crumbled in bran dust, almost as soon as Jimmy Sutherland boldly went where no corporate head had gone before ... into a venture with no major sponsor.

Couldn't we have had the Sheffield Shield ... pause ... sponsored by Wheatbix? Have all our cricket administrators gone to the Sanitarium?

Just as well you're dead, your Lordship. In this post-Packer, sub-continental cricket world world, tradition is no Shield from the sponsorship dollar.

How many Sheffield Shield's have NSW won? No idea, but Brett Lee does 9.

3 comments:

  1. it was certainly a bold move, $'s is $'s but original name change left a taste more sour than 4 day old milk in the sun; even to this rabid republican!

    it could be said that the naming of the trophy was nothing more than colonial brown nosing, but without the good Lords guineas who knows how long the states would have continued in their ad hoc way of competing. it was harder to get co operation from the states in those days than to remove week old dried weetbix from a bowl.

    Sanitarium! TOPS!

    i eat 7 every morning (with a handful of sultanas... if i eat 9 tomorrow, will i get a 5fa?

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  2. What so it is now called the Weatbix Cup or something. How do I not know this?

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  3. I hadn't heard either - in fact I thought the opposite was true; ie it was back to 'Sheffield Shield'?!? Has this changed since last season?

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