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

It is either the most spectacular sports marketing campaign ever, in New Zealand – or collusion between a brewery, liquor retailers and a sports broadcaster to sell more beer and attract more viewers to their pay-to-watch channels.

The bird beer's Catch a Million promotion, at the Western Indies and India one-day and T20 matches, is providing international media exposure rarely dreamed of in this country.

To the few that may have been living off the planet, the Catch A Million promotion involves punters purchasing a brewery's bright orange shirt with a target in the middle and wearing the shirt and a competition lanyard to the match.The concept is easy; take a one-handed catch over the boundary fence and take home the $100,000 up for grabs on the day (or night).

The matches where the competition has played out so far have seen a sea of orange punters, with reports suggesting the allocated number of lanyards has quickly been snapped up.

While it seems like plenty of good clean fun, the orange shirts have also gotten the pundits talking, with various commentators alluding to the bird beer competition during the games. This type of unpaid publicity is exactly what successful PR campaigns hope to achieve.

To anyone who thinks the brewery is happy to give away $1 million, the likelihood is it has gone to an insurance outfit where an actuary (a business professional who deals with the financial impact of risk), determines the probability of the successful number of catches, from where a premium is set.

To a cricket traditionalist, like Sideline Sid, the current Catch A Million promotion and the razzamatazz around T20, such as the HRV Cup and the Big Bash across the ditch, dilute the game. Give me a five-day test match any time.

The Bay Oval at Blake Park at the Mount is currently providing more modest, but no less exciting cricket, in the ICC Cricket World Cup Qualifier 2014.

In the last couple of weeks, Namibia, Uganda, Kenya and The Netherlands (with PNG still to arrive), have played some pulsating cricket, as they strive to earn the two ICC World Cup 2015 spots up for grabs.

Last week we had the only three African countries in the ICC Cricket World Cup Qualifier 2014, at the Bay Oval, all practising on the same day.

It is only events such as the CWCQ that gets the three diverse African countries together in front of the same audience.

However, the one thing they have in common is the game was introduced into their countries by the British. Namibia has an interesting story to the start of the game in the country, which was formerly a Germany colony. The first recorded history of cricket being played in the then South West Africa region was during the World War 1 in the Okonjande prisoner of war camp near Otjiwarongo, by British prisoners of war.

To Western Bay cricket fans – it is worth popping over the Bay Oval in the next week to catch some of the minnows of world cricket, who have aspirations to play in a bigger pond, in action.

Remaining ICC CWCQ14 Matches at the Bay Oval, Mount Maunganui:

21 January (Tuesday) Namibia v Uganda

23 January (Thursday) Papua New Guinea v Namibia

26 January (Sunday) CWCQ14 playoffs x 2

28 January (Tuesday) Seventh place playoff and ninth place playoff