One day in 1996

Tucked away on Youtube is a 15-minute video capturing the last two overs of the 1996 Sheffield Shield final.

The scenes in the middle are tense enough, as Western Australia's Brad Hogg and Brendon Julian try valiantly to separate South Australia's last pair of Shane George and Peter McIntyre. But much of the best footage captures the scenes around the game, as a crowd of some 15,000 expectant South Australians, and a transfixed state team, sit and ponder how life might be different depending on these last 12 balls.

When the celebrations arrive, they are as intense as anything seen in the game, from McIntyre's hilarious attempts at heel kicking and the release of tension in the SA viewing area, to the crowd's uproarious invasion of the field. One supporter races a tricolour flag onto the pitch, in a harbinger of the scenes to be witnessed when the Crows won the AFL premiership a year later.

Reminders of time and place abound. This is a vivid portrait of Australian cricket, and Adelaide, 20 years ago. A few of the glimpses include:

* It was the last year of Benson and Hedges sponsorship of Australian cricket, and SA's captain Jamie Siddons makes special mention of the hole being left by the legal inability of a tobacco company to sponsor the game anymore.

* The game is televised by Optus Vision, a defunct early pay television operator after the market was opened up beyond the free-to-air networks in 1995.

* Adelaide Oval was still a relatively small cricket ground, and would not have lights for another two seasons. A young Andrew Sinclair, now the president of the South Australia Cricket Association and a member of the board of the Stadium Management Authority that presides over the multi-purpose venue, watched the final hour from in front of the Victor Richardson Gates, now occupied by the vast eastern stands.

* SA's viewing area is a veritable who's who of Australian cricket coaching. Siddons is now coach of the Redbacks, wicketkeeper Tim Nielsen a former Australia coach and now Siddons' immediate superior at the SACA. Darren Lehmann and Greg Blewett are now offsides with the national team. SA's coach Jeff Hammond was at the time thought a contender to replace Bob Simpson.

* Yorkshire coach Jason Gillespie is still sporting his youthful ponytail when SA pose with the Shield. James Brayshaw is still Jamie, not a Channel Nine personality, but a forceful middle-order batsman with a knack for making hundreds, against Victoria, in particular.

* A fresh-faced Adam Gilchrist is interviewed briefly after WA were thwarted. A first-innings 189 was his first major innings, and led to the first Australian call-up of a decorated career later in the year. "An exceptional game of cricket, one of the better ones I've ever played in," he says, "but very disappointing to dominate a game like that."

* The Shield is presented to Siddons by Tasmania's Denis Rogers, who was then the ACB chairman. This time the Cricket Australia chairman David Peever and the chief executive James Sutherland will both be away in India. CA have discussed the future of the final lately, a conversation Rogers could not have imagined.

* Siddons, when handed the Shield, invites "as many people as we can fit into the Planet tonight" to celebrate. The Planet was a nightclub in Pirie St, part owned by the off spinner Tim May, who now lives in the US, along with the footballer Chris McDermott, the professional tennis player and coach Darren Cahill, and the prominent Adelaide lawyer Greg Griffin. WA's players joined the Redbacks in the club that night.

* To one side of SA's team pose is Barry "Nugget" Rees, the team's constant companion and motivator, whose prominence in Australian cricket has only grown since. These days, Lehmann gets him involved with the national side as much as possible.

At the back of the team is the moustachioed figure of Paul Nobes, another figure very much of that time. Never an athlete, he was an opening batsman, at once swashbuckling and resolute, and impressively consistent with a rough-hewn method. An understated member of the team, his low profile is summed up by the fact that Nobes and May are not visible in the viewing area shots, for superstition had them bolted down to their seats in the dressing room beneath, having been there when the final hour began.

Nobes remembers an SA side that built steadily over three seasons - competitive in 1994, thwarted finalists against Queensland in 1995, and then, finally, victorious in 1996. He says that a team largely considered cavalier had matured into a far more adaptable unit by that third summer, capable of dogged defence as much as brazen attack, as they proved on that final day. McIntyre, in particular, had been moved to improve his batting after his Test debut was marred by a failure to stay with Ian Healy against England in Adelaide the season before.

"Credit to Macca, he'd done a fair bit of work on his batting during the year and it hadn't really shown up much because our tail wasn't one of our strong points for the year," Nobes says, "and Georgey always had the ability but didn't put his mind to it that often. But the last hour, and then the countdown from the crowd, I think it was 30 balls, Julian and a young Brad Hogg bowling. It was very exciting, which made it all the better at the end.

"There was a lot of hugging and 'Wow this is incredible'. I remember Macca running up the stairs and not going through the door, just jumping through the front of the viewing area. That night, we ended up at the Planet Nightclub that Tim May was a partner in, the WA boys came along too, and it was a great night, a real thrill."

At the time, Siddons and others spoke of dynasties, but the centre did not hold. Calming influences like May and Nobes disappeared into retirement, Brayshaw began thinking of a looming media career, and Hammond departed for pastures new. Nobes believes the coach's role was not sufficiently acknowledged at the time, and notes how a more mellow and experienced Siddons is now providing the right combination of elements for a young SA team 20 years later.

"Bomber [Hammond] played an integral part, but some people in the team and around the team didn't see the importance of him," Nobes says. "But there was a few of us who certainly did. He was able to manage individuals - Tim May and I probably weren't the greatest athletes and someone else may think everyone needs to run a time trial in certain times, but Bomber was very good at managing the players and their personalities. I think Jamie probably understands a lot more about that now. Not everyone's the same

"I've spoken to him a couple of times this year and I think he's much more rounded and he would have matured as well over time. He's a much better coach now than he was back in 1996-97, although I was never coached by Jamie as I'd retired. Coaching is much more about being a people manager - probably not his strongest suit as a cricketer - and that's what he's grown into. As we get older we learn a few more lessons, and I'm so pleased for him."

Minus Nobes, May and Hammond, SA went from first in 1996 to last in 1997, beginning two decades where the team did not even make the Shield final, let alone win it. The team of 1996 has never assembled for a formal reunion, and Nobes observes how many different directions that players have gone in, from cricket coaching and television work, to overseas lives like May's in Texas. "It was," he says, "a funny old team."

A childhood friend of Lehmann in Adelaide's north, Nobes remains in the motor vehicle industry that has been the region's lifeblood. He will take control of a new car dealership during the Shield final at Glenelg - though he hopes to find time to pay a visit. The diverse pathways taken by so many of the class of '96 demonstrate how admirable it was to mould that disparate group into a team, but also that the Australian game back then was still able to take all sorts.

That fact is in strong contrast to the more rigorous and athletic approach that has pushed the Redbacks back to the decider this time around, and another reason the Youtube snapshot of that breathless March day in 1996 is one to cherish.