Sideline Sid Sports correspondent & historian www.sunlive.co.nz

The curtain has come down on a wonderful three months of top class cricket at the Bay Oval.

India thrilled the sold out ground in two games with the Black Caps.

The large and noisy band of Indian supporters provided an experience, rivaled only when England and the Barmy Army visit.

Sri Lanka, the White Fern verses India Women, New Zealand A against their Indian counterparts and two editions of the NZ Cricket Super Smash, kept cricket fans thrilled as balls sailed over the boundaries and stumps were split apart.

This season's international action at the Bay Oval was a continuation of overseas national sides visiting the Bay of Plenty, stretching back nearly a century.

The first international cricket visitors to the Bay were Australia, who played a Rotorua representative side in a 1 day single innings match, at the Government Gardens on April 6 1921.

Rotorua is shown on the NZ Cricket website match-results as batting 15 players who scored 250 runs, with the visitors replying with 314 from their regulation eleven batsmen.

Just four years after the newly formed Bay of Plenty Cricket Association played their first representative game, the big guns of world cricket paid a visit to Rotorua.

The Marylebone Cricket Club played Bay of Plenty, in another of what was called a one day single innings match before the advent of one-day cricket.

The MCC visit in the 1935-36 season was a massive undertaking, with a five to six week sea voyage to and from the southern hemisphere.

The six month tour encompassed a game in Ceylon and six matches in Australia, before touring the length and breadth of New Zealand.

The game at the Government Gardens saw Bay of Plenty bowled out for just 99.

The MMC got the total for the lost of a solitary wicket, but as was the custom of the day, batted on to reach 291 for the loss of six wickets.

MCC batsman JH (John Hanbury) Human scored the first representative century in Bay of Plenty cricket with 107 runs.

After WW2, Fiji were reasonably regular international visitors, with encounters with the Bay in 1948, 1954, 1961 and the last in 1967 at the Tauranga Domain.

The MCC returned to play a Bay of Plenty-Thames Valley combined team in 1961. It is interesting to note that the game was played on the inner-domain which is today's number one rugby field in front of the grandstand.

Arguably the best team to play in the Bay of Plenty was the 1969 West Indies touring side, which played a Bay of Plenty Invitation team, at Smallbone Park in Rotorua on March 19.

A number of the greats of West Indies cricket came to the Bay to play in the match. (Sir) Garfield Sobers is reputed to have blasted a huge six on to the roadway as he hit a quick fire fifty. CA (Charlie) Davis smashed 102, with other well known Windies players of the day including Roy Fredricks, Basil Butcher and Wes Hall.

Two expat West Indian test players were selected for the Bay of Plenty Invitation team. Bruce Paraudeau who played 13 tests for the West Indies and Sam Guillen.

After immigration to New Zealand, Guillen became one of the few who have played international cricket for two nations.

A couple of decades ago, New Zealand Cricket flirted with international games at Owen Delaney Park in Taupo.

The Black Caps played three ODI's around the dawn of the new millennium, before the experiment came to a premature end.

The first international at the Bay Oval against South Africa in October 2014, has led to the Western Bay of Plenty venue becoming a NZ Cricket first pick, when international cricket matches are allocated each season.