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

The Western Bay domination is set to continue when Baywide cricket resumes from its holiday hiatus on Saturday.

At the start of the Baywide season back at the start of October, Sideline Sid looked into his crystal ball and predicted that all four pieces of Baywide silverware would fall into the hands of Western Bay teams.

He sees no reason to change his prediction, with the first half of the season seeing the Western Bay sides tightening their stranglehold on the Baywide silverware.

While a Western Bay side annexed the Baywide Cup first past the post competition – no one could have predicted the drama in the last round of play in Mid-December.

At the half way stage of the first innings at Blake and Pemberton Parks, Mount Maunganui were in desperate trouble at 95/7 against archrivals Cadets, with Greerton well on the way to bowling East Bay United out for a modest total.

Enter Mount Maunganui heroes Alex Gooding and Tony Goodin. Unconcerned about the big ask, the two lower order batsman blasted a partnership of 144, with Gooding posting an unbeaten 103 while Goodin was bowled out for 63.

Fortune favoured the brave as the Cadets fielders dropped both batsmen when they were on one run each. The Mount Maunganui turn at bat finished at 263/8.

Over at Pemberton Park, Greerton dismissed the Eastern Bay visitors for 155, with the Mounties needing to bowl Cadets out to win the Baywide trophy.

Mount Maunganui, walked off Blake Park in apparent despair after Cadets still had two wickets in hand, when stumps were drawn.

However misery turned to joy when a quick phone call to Greerton headquarters, revealed that Greerton had been rolled for 105 by the Eastern Bay bowlers – which handed Mount Maunganui the first Baywide prize of the season.

An intriguing clash opens the Williams Cup, when the two protagonists from the dramatic finish to the Baywide Cup, meet at Pemberton Park this Saturday. The huge rivalry shared by current Williams Cup titleholders Greerton and Mount Maunganui is likely to be ratcheted up several notches, when the two Baywide contenders go into head to head battle at the weekend.

Looking into his crystal ball, Sideline Sid reckons that the real smokey in the race for the long time Baywide trophy that dates back over eight decades, is Te Puke.

No Bay of Plenty team has won the prestigious Baywide prize, more than the 14 times that the Williams Cup has resided in the Te Puke trophy cabinet.

The Te Puke premiers made a sterling return to form in the Baywide first round and would have sneaked through to win the Baywide Cup if Cadets had of beaten the Mount.

It was with misty eyes that Sid read of the passing of cricket icon Tony Greig last week. While the South African born players made his name for England in test cricket – few people will know that he brought two teams of cricket superstars to the Tauranga Domain in 1978.

The occasion was a World Series Cricket match. World Series Cricket (WSC) was a breakaway professional cricket competition staged between 1977 after the Australian Cricket Board refused to accept Channel Nine's bid to gain exclusive television rights to Australian Test matches.

Network Nine's Kerry Packer set up his own series, by secretly signing a number of the best players in the world and in so doing turned the cricket world on its head.

Never before (or since) had such a galaxy of world stars appeared in Tauranga.

The WSC Australian team featured such household names as Dennis Lillee, Greg Chappell, Ian Chappell, David Hookes and Rod Marsh. Tony Greig led the WSC World X1 with stars such as Barry Richards, Lawrence Rowe, Michael Procter, John Snow and New Zealand's own superstar Richard Hadlee.

The matches, which ran in direct opposition to the established international cricket matches, changed the face of cricket. The WSC was the start of the professional era as we know it today.

Seeya at Pemberton Park on Saturday