To stay alive in this season's competition, New South Wales simply had to beat Tasmania in the teams' Mercantile Mutual Cup clash here at the Sydney Cricket Ground today. And, with an emphatic six wicket win with exactly six overs to spare, it did the job very simply indeed.

So, after the longest preliminary series in Australian domestic one-day history, it will be Western Australia and New South Wales contesting next week's Mercantile Mutual Cup Final in Perth. The former team and the venue had already been decided last week but the Blues entered this closing preliminary encounter needing a win over the Tasmanians to displace South Australia from second spot on the Cup standings and to seal their spot. In the end, it was a feat easily achieved.

With another superbly controlled one-day innings, Michael Bevan (75) was the star of a victory that required his team to overhaul the relatively modest score of 8/196. This was after leg spinner Stuart MacGill (3/41 from ten overs), paceman Stuart Clark (2/30 off ten) and left arm spinner Mark Higgs (2/39 from nine) had led the way in restricting the Tigers' flow of runs earlier in the day.

"Everyone contributed," beamed a delighted New South Wales captain, Shane Lee. "That's a really positive thing. There's so much flexibility and versatility in this side."

"They'll be tough," said Lee, with an eye to his opposition next week.

"But I think the positive thing is that we're on our way up towards the end of the season and starting to play really good cricket and they're starting to hit a little bit of a wall. So we're going to be over there full of confidence and hopefully we can take them by surprise," he added.

Following the Tasmanians' win at the toss, nothing really went right for the visitors today. Doubtless, the pitch offered more life than they were expecting in the early stages of a fine, sunny day in Sydney. They battled to come to terms with this and then battled to recover. In short, they produced a rather mediocre performance.

The Tigers had gambled with a reshuffled batting order on the way to an important win over Victoria in Launceston in their last Cup fixture and, undeterred by that experience on the way to accumulating the modest total of 183, tried it again. This time it never really looked like working. Or at least not until very late in the innings when captain Jamie Cox (66*), batting at number five, fashioned another great individual hand to at least push his side toward a far better score than had originally been promised.

With all-rounder Brad Thomas (16) and wicketkeeper-batsman Sean Clingeleffer (11*), Cox crafted two handy late partnerships that at least added some semblance of momentum to the innings. But, by then, correct and skilled strokeplay was essentially too late in its arrival. Their own chances of making the Final had been extinguished by South Australia's win over Victoria in Adelaide yesterday and duly the Tigers looked like a team all dressed up but with nowhere to go.

"Getting big scores has been our biggest problem (this year). I can't remember us getting over 200 all that often. It's probably happened three or four times and that's just not good enough in a competition where you generally need 250+ scores to be competitive," mused Cox after the game.

By inducing Shane Watson (25) to play an errant cut and Shaun Young (36) to impatiently advance out of his crease in the space of his first eight deliveries, man of the match MacGill went a long way toward settling the fate of the contest. Another wicket came in his fourth over when Graeme Cunningham (2) committed the rather unfortunate sin of mistiming a sweep shot to be bowled around his legs.

At that point, the leg spinner had come within a wicket of equalling the all-time record for the most number of victims in an Australian domestic one-day season. Albeit that the attainment of that record might be considered a little specious in view of the fact that current record holders Kade Harvey and Shane George played in half the number of games to capture their totals of eighteen.

Alas, he didn't claim another and will have to wait one more week to attempt to secure a record that he later suggested "didn't really count". But it didn't really matter from a New South Wales point of view that he failed to figure on the scorecard again. Because Higgs quickly claimed the wickets of Thomas and David Saker (0) and Clark chimed in with the scalp of Michael DiVenuto (6). This served to continue to propel the Tasmanians' slide toward a score which Cox himself professed was "about thirty short of where we wanted to be".

In their chase, the Blues began in disastrous fashion when openers Michael Clarke (1) and Brad Haddin (4) were dismissed inside the opening three overs of the afternoon session.

It was probably fitting, though, that their two most experienced and seasoned batsmen, Bevan and Lee (57), came to be joined at this point. Although they were still forced to endure the odd perilously close shave, and notwithstanding the fact that they were compelled to confront the impeccable accuracy of the underrated Damien Wright (1/25 from ten overs) at the Paddington End, the two then set about affirming New South Wales' dominance with a commanding ninety-three run alliance.

Lee was dropped at twelve as Daniel Marsh attempted to pull in a spectacular catch at slip off the bowling of Saker (1/35 off five overs) and then French cut a ball from Brett Geeves (0/38 from four) narrowly past leg stump shortly afterward. If a Watson throw from mid wicket had connected with the stumps as Lee ran a cheeky single, then he would also have been dismissed at twenty-two.

Otherwise, Lee played a furious innings that was perfect for the situation. Nine boundaries flowed as he swept to a half century from the small matter of just fifty-one deliveries. Only Wright was spared his wrath; at the other end, Saker and Geeves both took a towelling. To make matters even more grave for Tasmania, reliable medium pacer Young remained off the field for the entirety of the afternoon with a back injury.

The New South Wales captain, whose batting complemented a far more solid Bevan beautifully, was finally sent on his way when Cox held an excellent overhead catch at cover as a fierce drive was issued at the fast medium pace of Watson in the twentieth over.

But, with the Bevan-Lee stand, most of Tasmania's already slender hopes of victory effectively vanished. Accordingly, there were not too many happy faces to be seen among the ranks of the Tigers in the field. There would not have been a great number of them far away in South Australia either as the Redbacks' chances of holding on to second place receded rapidly.

© 2001 CricInfo Ltd